Reichard Real Estate Academy students find purpose and a path at Gies Business

When the Reichard Real Estate Academy welcomed its first students in 2024, everything about the program was new. The structure was still forming. The expectations were still being defined. What existed from the start, however, was belief—in the power of experiential learning, in the promise of real estate as a force for good, and in the students willing to take the first step forward.

For Abhinaav Justhy, Christian Zlatarski, and Michael Kathrein, that first step became the foundation of their futures.

The Reichard Real Estate Academy, as one of many experiential learning opportunities at Gies College of Business, serves to provide high-achieving students with specialized courses, additional extracurricular programming, and powerful networking opportunities to jumpstart a purpose-driven career in commercial real estate.

Members of the Academy’s inaugural cohort, the three seniors are set to graduate in December 2025. They will be among the first students to complete the Reichard Real Estate Academy experience from beginning to end. In doing so, they help shape the experience that future students will step into.

Finding Direction Through Real Estate

Justhy, a finance major from Tucson, Arizona, transferred to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a sophomore.

“I found out about Rho Epsilon at Quad Day,” Justhy said. “Around the same time, I met Seth Briggs, who was launching the Academy.”

That moment shifted his course.

Zlatarski’s path looked different, but it led to the same place. He arrived at Illinois as an engineering student before transferring into Gies College of Business. Growing up in Chicago, he had early exposure to real estate through his family, but the industry did not feel like a real option until the Academy took shape.

“When the Academy launched, that’s when it became something real,” he said.

Kathrein also joined during that first admissions cycle, stepping into a program that was still being built alongside its students. Without any family with a real estate background, it was all uncharted territory.

“I noticed that every professional in the industry absolutely loved their job. I wanted to be a part of it,” Kathrein said. Together, the three entered untested ground.

From the beginning, the Academy was defined by hands-on experience. In the classroom, students did far more than study theory. They underwrote deals, built models, and they stood in front of faculty and defended their work.

“He put us right in the deep end,” Justhy said of the late Seth Briggs, who passed away in early 2025. “We were underwriting deals and presenting them like we were in an investment committee.”

The tools were real, too. The Academy introduced Argus, industry-standard real estate modeling software, into the curriculum. Justhy, drawing from his internship experience, taught the platform to his peers.

Outside the classroom, that same spirit carried into Rho Epsilon, the campus-wide real estate registered student organization. In spring 2024, Justhy and Kathrein launched a student-led real estate analyst training program within Rho Epsilon to prepare younger students for the industry. Through Rho Epsilon, they facilitate speaker sessions with top industry professionals. The organization also hosts firm treks and provides opportunities for students to attend conferences in Chicago and other cities in order to connect with industry professionals.

New member analysts underwrite and create an investment committee pitch of a property acquisition using platforms such as CoStar, Microsoft Excel, and PowerPoint. Students are able to present their work to faculty judges at the culmination of the program.

“We wanted underclassmen to have the opportunity to learn the language of real estate,” Kathrein said.

Today, the analyst program is required for Rho Epsilon members and is widely viewed as a pipeline into the Academy.

Faculty Support and a Strong Community

While technical skills shaped their résumés, faculty and community shaped their experience.

Students point to Interim Director Jeff Brown and Teaching Professor C. Kat Grimsley as steady forces behind the Academy’s momentum. They also speak with deep gratitude about Briggs.

“Seth would be so happy with where this is now,” Justhy said. “The last email I ever got from him was about [Nate Reichard’s $5 million] donation. He said, ‘Great things to come.’”

For Zlatarski, Briggs was the person who helped students see what they were capable of becoming.

“He fought for us constantly,” Zlatarski said. “He worked to help us find internships. He helped us build confidence.”

“These students represent what is possible when you combine talent, purpose, and opportunity,” said Jeff Brown, dean emeritus at Gies Business and current professor of finance and academic director of the Real Estate Finance program. “As members of the first Reichard Real Estate Academy cohort, they helped shape the culture of the program while developing into confident real estate professionals. Their success speaks to the strength of the Academy and to what lies ahead for real estate education at Gies Business.”

“This first cohort stepped into something that was still being built, and they chose to lead anyway," Grimsley said. "They stretched themselves academically, they supported one another, and they built pathways for students who will come after them. What they’ve done embodies exactly what Reichard Real Estate Academy was designed to be at Gies Business: rigorous, collaborative, and deeply connected to real-world impact.”

Beyond faculty support, students describe the Academy and Rho Epsilon as one shared community. Nearly all Academy students remain active in the RSO.

“The community is a big part of why people stay,” Zlatarski said. “People hang out together. We get dinner together. We talk about internships and life.”

For Justhy, who transferred into Illinois midway through college, that sense of belonging mattered deeply.

“Rho Epsilon helped me integrate socially,” he said. “The Academy helped me integrate professionally.”

All three students are now stepping into competitive roles across the real estate industry.

Justhy will move to Los Angeles to begin work as an asset management analyst at Bellwether Asset Management. Kathrein is headed to Chicago for a role in debt originations with PGIM. Zlatarski, who interned with AJ Capital Partners in hotel development, is pursuing opportunities in development in the Chicago market.

Yet none of them talk about success only in terms of placement.

“Real estate is tangible,” Zlatarski said. “You can see it. You can walk it. You can shape the spaces people live and work in.”

For Justhy, purpose also meant leaving something better than he found it.

“My goal was to make it easier for the students coming after us,” he said. “Now we are seeing sophomores place at great companies.”

Justhy, Zlatarski, and Kathrein joined Reichard Real Estate Academy when little of it yet existed. They learned alongside a new curriculum, they helped create new training programs, and they shaped leadership structures that continue today.

Now, as some of the Academy’s first graduating students, their impact reaches far beyond their own careers. It lives in the students who follow the path they helped build—and in the future of real estate education at Gies College of Business.