Claudia A. Steeb

Vice Chair
Managing Director
JLL Capital Markets

Claudia Steeb is a senior managing director at JLL Capital Markets and the vice chair for the Penn State Real Estate Advisory Board. Steeb graduated from Penn State in 1981 with a BS in finance and continues to stay active at the university by guest lecturing in classes and speaking at Real Estate Boot Camp events. She tries to help guide students and teach practical applications to what they’re learning in the classroom through these presentations. Steeb was also the 2023 recipient of the Smeal Distinguished Achievement Award.

At JLL, Steeb focuses on financing, investment sales advisory, and equity raises on mixed use properties, retail properties, mall properties, self-storage properties and any property that is out of the ordinary. She began her career working at US Steel in their Realty Development Division, which is how she originally got into real estate. She then moved to Lane Noland Smith & Co., a mortgage banking firm in Pittsburgh, where she began to work in financing commercial real estate. Finally, she moved to HFF, which was later bought by JLL, as a managing director.

Steeb was drawn to the real estate industry because she believes finance can be very applicable to real estate in a tangible way. In real estate, she can utilize her love of math and numbers in interesting projects like shopping malls, mixed-use assets, and retail properties. Steeb enjoys her job because she gets to work with people at all stages of the business. She likes working with clients and executives to help them achieve their goals and provide information for their deals so they can make better business decisions.

Her advice to students who will soon enter the industry is to ask a lot of questions because everything is a building block, and if you don’t understand the basics you will get lost along the way. Steeb also wants to encourage students to follow their passion because that is what will make them happier and more successful.

Steeb also mentors other women working at JLL. Working in a male-dominated industry for her entire career has come with many challenges, but she stresses that it’s not something to be afraid of for other women in the field. Steeb emphasizes the need for women to be at least five times more prepared than their male counterparts and how important it is for them to establish themselves so they won’t have to be so prepared in the future. “Working in a male-dominated industry can be fun and challenging, but you have to be prepared for it,” Steeb said.

Steeb currently resides in Pittsburgh and has had two daughters who have also attended Penn State. She enjoys any opportunity she has to visit and speak at Penn State because it is her way of giving back to the school that helped her get where she is today.