Kristin Calve At the Table
Taking Control, With a Flexible Grip As deputy general counsel at a real estate investment and management company. Amber Murray responds creatively to legal and business issues, but as the director of her career, she plots her own path. CCBJ: What led you to enroll with Jamestown? Amber Murray: I started my practice at King & Spalding in the commercial real estate transactions practice group. I worked for a number of clients who were developers and real estate private equity firms, and did some real estate finance, with limited work for Jamestown. Noah Peeters was also at King & Spalding; he did more work for Jamestown, and in 2012, he came in-house and is now our general counsel. Shortly after he joined Jamestown, the in-house legal team here realized that they needed another mid-level attorney, and he reached out to me. The work fit perfectly with what I was already doing, and I liked the types of properties that Jamestown owns. I knew they did really sophisticated work, and I was interested in learning more about the business side of real estate, not just the transactional side. Andthe move came at a good time in my career, because I was a seventh-year associate, and I’d decided that I wasn’t interested in pursuing partnership. What’s your leadership style like? I allow people the freedom to grow. I give them a fairly large amount of autonomy so that they can develop their own style and come back to me if they need advice, so I’m not micromanaging them. I am on the more introverted end. I tend to do a lot more listening, and I think that helps sometimes with leadership, because I’m often the person who’s not always talking the loudest. I synthesize everyone’s comments and come to a compromise position that addresses all of their concerns.
time was the Executive Assistant to the Chancellor of North Carolina Central University in Durham, NC. She is a lawyer by training, a family friend and was one of my mentors. She was always very organized and poised under pressure — people throughout the university had a large amount of respect for her intellect and expertise. As I was considering going to law school, she helped me think about the best schools to attend and what kind of practice I might be interested in pursuing.
Who’s influenced you in your career?
What qualities do you look for when hiring for your team?
The year after I graduated from college I worked as the administrative assistant to Rosalind Fuse-Hall who at the
We look for people who are highly intelligent, who are hard workers, but also who are willing to be flexible and creative.
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MARCH APRIL 2020
