Master's in Real Estate
Glenn R. Williamson
Faculty Director, Masters in Real Estate Program
Glenn Williamson has directed Georgetown’s Masters in Real Estate (MPRE) Program since 2014. During his tenure, he has overseen the doubling of student enrollment through continued evolution and expansion of course offerings on campus, online and in blended modalities. The MPRE program has become one of the top-ranked, largest and most diverse masters in real estate programs in the United States, comprising 50 adjunct faculty and 175 graduates each year.
As full-time Associate Professor of the Practice, Williamson teaches the initial MPRE course, Ethics in Action, as well as the final course, Capstone, to keep abreast of student abilities and program challenges. He also teaches Exploring Opportunities in Europe, which exposes MPRE students to ExpoReal, the largest real estate conference in the world, held annually in Munich, as well as current projects in Hamburg, Warsaw and Berlin. Teaching courses on-campus, online and in dual modalities has provided insights into how lessons learned from one type of course can be shared among faculty and adapted within other courses.
Owner, Managing Director, Amber Real Estate LLC
Williamson formed Amber in 2002 to carry out CEE projects initiated while at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Warsaw. Over the past 20+ years, he has represented US and European investors seeking to enter CEE markets and advised individuals, corporations and non-profit organizations with the finance, development and disposition of office, hotel and mixed-use properties. Clients included the Jewish Renaissance Foundation, Telekomunikacija Polska SA and Heitman. Here in Washington, DC, Amber has advised DC agencies including the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation, Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development and Department of Health on major projects such as the 5 million square foot redevelopment at Hill East as well as the investment of $70 million in Tobacco Settlement Funds to develop 8 primary and urgent care centers in underserved sections of the city. Amber has also engaged with the latest "emerging market" in Sustainability by securing a $300,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to analyze the effectiveness of light weight green roofs for managing storm water runoff and providing energy savings through better insulation of the buildings beneath them. Results of this study were published in an article in the journal Nitrogen in 2018.
Academic Interests
Glenn Williamson combines his love of history with a practical sense of how to make positive impacts on the world - locally and globally. After graduating from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service in 1983, he spent the next year organizing volunteers in Tijuana, Mexico before returning to the US to earn an MBA from the University of Chicago in 1986. He began his real estate career fostering neighborhood redevelopment in Chicago and in 1992 completed the financing, construction and lease-up of a medical office building on the city’s South Side. The fall of the Berlin Wall, together with a severe downturn in US real estate markets, drew him to Central Eastern Europe (CEE) in 1994.
Williamson lived and worked overseas for 9 years in Bulgaria, Russia and Poland developing office properties as these countries transitioned towards market-based economies from the 1990s to early 2000s. In 2014, he published a memoir, Inside Out: Building a Glass House in Russia, detailing the experience of developing a class A office building in St. Petersburg. That project won the FIABCI Prix d’Excellence in 2000.
One of the benefits of teaching at Georgetown is the ability to continue to learn. Rekindling his love of history, Williamson earned his second GU degree, a Masters in Global, International and Comparative (MAGIC) History, in 2023.