Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path? Tucker: I grew up in a military family and went to college out of high school but left college right at the start of the Gulf War. I did about six and a half years in the military and met someone that happened to be in the multifamily business, but never thought anything of it. But once I got out of the military and went back to school, because I knew someone in the business, I thought, “Alright, this will be a job until I get a ‘real job’.” I started business school and then started applying what I was learning and it ultimately became my career. Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career? Tucker: Prior to Cortland, I started two management companies, one of which was in Raleigh, North Carolina. I partnered with a development company in Raleigh and went to work. We were probably about two and a half years in and the development arm went bankrupt, which I had no control over. Unfortunately, we were all master branded under the same name. So, I quickly found out how being tied to another entity can be a benefit, but it can also be catastrophic when you rely on that name brand to sell the business. Our business dried up after that. But it was a great experience that taught me a ton about business, how not only your function works, but then also how you partner across the business to make your function work in conjunction with others. Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that? Tucker: I’ll go back to when I was in school. I remember taking a critical thinking course. I grew up in a military family, then went into the military and I approached life and work as, “Do what you’re told and do it to the best of your abilities.” That was what’s bred into you in the military. So, that course was revolutionary for me when I was early in my career. I started to question a lot of things deeper to understand how systems work and how processes work. I questioned the organization’s goals and outputs to really understand the why behind everything we were asked to do and how it ties to other things. I remember distinctly that semester in college really changing the way I looked at my future. None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that? Tucker: There have been plenty along the way, but certainly there’s been one since I’ve been at Cortland. I’ll credit our CEO Steven DeFrancis. I’d always been successful because I could focus on systems and processes and get those right and create redundancies and eliminate risk. And I felt really good about my ability to do that across multiple organizations. Then he got a call from a resident who was having some significant issues relocating from out of state to one of our properties. He reached out and asked me to investigate what was going on. I dug in and immediately found the process breakdown. Super excited, I responded with all my answers. But his response back to me was, “But what about her?” I was taken by his response and learned she was nine months pregnant with her third child. All she needed was her new address. But the entire time, all I did was focus on the system and the process and not the actual human whom we serve. While I’d been in this business for multiple decades, I’d never connected that dot in my leadership. It was an epiphany for me to realize it’s about the people that we serve, not about the organization or how the organization works. That really changed how I started to lead my team. I’ll credit Steven with sending an email to the entire organization that said, “Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Remember the person you’re serving and get to know them, understand what their needs are.” And then we later bought a nice stroller and wowed this resident when she moved in. It was a big moment for not only me, but I think for the entire organization, to remind us that this is a people business. You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each? Tucker: Curiosity. I’ve always been a curious person. When I was in the military, I worked in psychiatry for about six and a half years. I learned a lot about the human mind and how it works. To this day, I still believe if you’re going to be a successful leader, you have to be able to understand people and how they think, what motivates them. Being a good leader is how you connect on a deeper level. I really try to take those learnings from the military and use