Matt Karatz on Real Estate and City Government

Matt Karatz spoke to our leadership and ethics class a few weeks ago, and it was an interesting discussion that reinforced a lot of things other speakers mentioned. Karatz has worked in the Office of Economic and Business Development for the City and in the field of real estate development as well.

He graduated from Claremont college and went to New York to become a journalist. After a lot of hard work in calling many news agencies, ABC News World Report Investigative Reporting hired him. Most of his work ended up causing him to write stories about the bad in people, and he quickly got tired of it, even though he was successful at it, receiving an Emmy for one of his stories.

He transitioned to real estate and worked for KBHome. After that, he went to work for Caruso, the owner of the Grove shopping mall. Austin Beutner, whom we also heard speak in our class, reached out to him and offered him the opportunity to help him in his City post. Karatz took the position for $1 salary and ended up getting a lot done. Beutner really inspired Karatz to believe he could actually change local politics. Now, Karatz is going back to real estate.

The biggest lessons he told us he learned from his experience were the following:

• Perceived power is real power.
  
• You need to have a clear idea of your end game.
  
• Politics should be like business.
  
• Civic workers should be trained like managers.
  
• Give bonuses according to performance and 360 reviews.