Saúl Nuñez Ibarra
I’m from Mexico—from Mexico City, to be precise—and I’m an architect who is passionate about launching and executing innovative and profitable projects. I’ve been in the design and building world for many years, and wanted to switch my career path, particularly to be more involved with the financial aspects of the process.
“You have to understand the financial part, the architectural, the design, law, and the business idea of the entire process. It has helped me grow into the sector.”
Aligning his passion and his profession
For Saúl Nuñez Ibarra, the multidisciplinary nature of the Master in Real Estate Development is what drew him to the program. Already an experienced architect, Saúl was looking to immerse himself in the aspects of the real estate industry that he hadn’t been too deeply involved with in his career to that point.
That meant, as well as architecture and design itself, the financial, legal, urban development, tech and business sides of the entire real estate ecosystem. For Saúl, improving his skills in those unfamiliar parts of the industry has helped him “grow into the sector.”
Fitting all those subjects into just ten months made for an intense experience, but one he enjoyed. His particular highlight was his Capstone Project, the culmination of the program that sees teams of students come up with proposed solutions to a real-life architectural problem or challenge. In Saúl’s project, the scale of their proposal was huge: a 300,000m² development designed to improve the lives of large numbers of city dwellers.
“It's a multidisciplinary program where you can find a lot of different aspects of the real estate world.”
It’s probably no surprise that, having worked on such a large-scale project with a team of classmates who each brought their own specialist skill set to the endeavor, Saúl built quite a network in his time on the program. Over 40 nationalities, drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds, were represented in his class, but they all came together with similar ambitions. That’s something that’s stayed with him. In fact, he has set up a company with one of his former classmates, and still works with three of them. It’s clear that the connections he made have already proved invaluable.
In his current role for a B2B financial solutions startup in the sector, Saúl helps businesses find funding from banks or private entities to develop their ideas. He’s been able to align his specific interests in the sector with his career—exactly what the program strives for—so we’ll be following his career with interest.
