Executive Search Consultants
Commercial Real Estate
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP • JUDGMENT • INTEGRITY • EXPERIENCE • RESULTS
Inquiring minds have asked… What does TCAP stand for?
Talent Capital, a stage name, is the go-to response. In fact, TCAP stands for Two Chicks and A Phone, named to describe what we were upon formation in 2006: two women, Drucilla Richards and Clara Kim, with a phone always within reach, with heart, experience, and a commitment to provide differentiated and distinguished real estate executive search work to clients and candidates alike. Although Clara left TCAP and the search business in 2012 for an inhouse HR role, she remains foundational to TCAP’s history. On the occasion of TCAP’s 20th anniversary, Dru and Clara recently got together to celebrate their enduring friendship, the Company’s rich history, and the fabulous TCAP name: Two Chicks and A Phone.
PRACTICE
TCAP Associates is a retained executive search practice that focuses exclusively on the commercial real estate industry. Co-founded in 2006 by Drucilla Richards and Clara Kim, and now celebrating its 20th Anniversary, TCAP has a proven track record of excellence in completing a broad range of assignments. Our track record spans all asset classes and most-all professional functions for many different types of real estate companies: public and private, small and large, principal and intermediary, operating and development.
TCAP’s commitment to excellence and integrity is to clients and candidates alike. We don’t sell candidates to clients. We don’t sell jobs to candidates. Rather, we find fits. We are sincere in our passion to find the perfect fit between an individual candidate’s talents and career aspirations and a company’s need for human talent, both for the subject role and for the longer term.
We are stewards of our clients in the hiring markets, a responsibility we take very seriously. We represent our clients with integrity and with a keen understanding of their business and culture. We are also stewards of candidates in the hiring markets; we take this responsibility as seriously. We interact with candidates with respect, transparency, and sincerity.
We are very proud of our track record of excellent work. We measure our success not by the number of assignments completed, but rather by client satisfaction and the placed candidate’s tenure and growth trajectory at the company. The majority of our work is for repeat clients. Of particular satisfaction is that several of our clients were formerly candidates.
PRACTICE ESSENCE
Boutique
Who you see is who you get; no hand-off to junior recruiters
Client-facing; flexible in both approach and process
Small assignment load by choice
Large candidate pool given short off-limits list
Art & Science
Successful search requires both
Science: candidate identification is a methodological process; leverage of AI, LinkedIn and other online platforms makes this aspect of a search easier, faster, and more of commodity
Art: the judgment piece of candidate assessment and cultural fit; much more difficult to delegate to machine learning, and accordingly, the much higher value-add component
Although very adept at the Science: Process component, we believe it is the Art: Judgment component that differentiates us from our peers
Broad Reach in Commercial Real Estate Industry
Exclusive focus on the commercial real estate industry
Experienced with all asset classes: residential, office, retail, mixed-use, hospitality, industrial, storage
Completed assignments throughout the organizational hierarchy: c-suite to senior associate
Successful placements in the functional disciplines of investments, development, acquisitions, capital markets, portfolio and asset management, operations, finance & accounting, human resources
Geographic reach throughout the US
Proven Track Record
20+ years of search experience
Demonstrated track record of completed assignments
Majority of placed candidates earn successive promotions and have long tenure
Much of our work is repeat business
Excellent recommendations from clients and candidates
LEADERSHIP
Drucilla Richards
Drucilla Richards describes herself as a real estate capital markets professional who happened upon search. She believes it is her twenty years of industry experience as a transactor that differentiates the quality of her search work. She has sat in client’s shoes. She has sat in candidate’s shoes. She understands the jobs themselves, having been around all of them and having done some of them first-hand. She instinctively understands both clients’ and candidates’ needs, is a keen underwriting of both functional and cultural fit, a responsible steward of all parties’ interests, and a seasoned negotiator.
Before entering the search business, Dru held senior capital markets and investment banking positions at Trammell Crow Company, Trammell Crow Residential, Morgan Stanley and Legg Mason. She began her career as a construction lender at Citicorp Real Estate. While a partner at TCR, she worked hand-in-glove with Ron Terwilliger and led the sale of several divisions of the Company to various REITs. While an investment banker, she participated in the IPO’s of twelve REIT offerings.
Wanting more schedule flexibility after the birth of her two sons, Dru pivoted to the search industry, attracted by its client-facing and transactional nature, and the opportunity to provide a differentiated approach to the work itself because of her industry background and a personal commitment to full-cycle execution of client interface and recruitment execution (vs the standard recruiter model that bifurcates these roles). Dru joined Equinox Search, and in 2006, after two years at Equinox, Dru left and founded TCAP Associates with her Equinox colleague, Clara Kim. In 2012, Clara left TCAP and the search business for an in-house HR role, and since that time, Dru has led TCAP as its sole Partner.
Over the past twenty years, Dru’s body of search work has been across all functional disciplines and asset classes for premier real estate clients, including Wood Partners, Kolter Multifamily, RangeWater Real Estate, JBG SMITH and GTIS Partners. Compelling aspects of her work include institutional-quality execution, premier client service, small assignment load by choice, and measurement of success, not by the number of searches completed, but by the tenure of those people placed and the quality of their advancement into positions of increasing responsibility.
Dru holds an MBA from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and a BA in economics from the University of California, Irvine, where she played women’s varsity tennis.