Minneapolis-area newbie looking to transition

[Mike Nesnidal]

Hello, I'm new to the forum and I'm looking for advice on how to make a career transition into Minneapolis area real estate development and/or investment, preferably commercial but I'm open. My guess is that I'm pretty atypical both in training and timing. I'm pretty far along into a career in Aerospace management, but I've been looking for quite some time to move into something new. I'm almost 52. I have a PhD in engineering from UW-Madison and in 2016 completed my MBA at the University of St Thomas with a finance emphasis. During my MBA program, I also participated in the highly competitive Aristotle Fund Management Program - a completely student-run mid-cap endowment portfolio. Student managers identify, research, and pitch interesting stocks and manage the overall portfolio. I was the Technology sector manager. Researching a stock involved developing complete pro-forma financial statements and valuations using primarily DCF models supported by comps. I fell in love with financial modeling and CF valuation. I was pretty successful.

While I've continued to use these skills in the course of managing my personal investments, I've recently become more and more intrigued with leveraging this experience for real estate investment. I understand the importance of building a network and of gaining exposure to the various functional areas to be a successful commercial RE developer. I would be interested in learning how I might make a staged transition into this field. The obvious first step for me would seem to be in some form of valuation role. However, I could not afford to move cold-turkey since I would make at the very most only half of what I currently make. I couldn't make that work. Any ideas?

Would it be possible to temporarily play some type of part-time role (moonlighting perhaps) so I can keep my current job while increasing my experience and value in the RE arena? Any recommendations for networking in the MPLS area? St Thomas used to have a Masters program in RE management, but it was recently combined with another program I believe. I do plan on reaching out to UST for alumni contacts,

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Mike