REAL ESTATE NEWS

In a commercial real estate career, deals, promotions and capital often hinge on how others perceive you — which is exactly why Amanda Knox told GlobeSt.'s Women of Influence audience that the most important leadership skill they can build is the ability to define their own story, even when others try to define it for them.

Knox, a journalist and New York Times bestselling author whose wrongful conviction and eventual exoneration became one of the most scrutinized criminal cases in the world, opened the conference with a keynote on resilience, identity and leadership that drew a direct line between personal narrative and professional power.

"Define yourself not by what happened to you, but by how you respond," Knox told attendees, noting that in any high-stakes field, including commercial real estate, people will attach labels, judgments and simplified storylines to you. She argued that long-term confidence and authentic leadership begin when you refuse to let those external narratives become your truth.

From Vilified To Owning The Narrative

Knox recalled how, at 20, she went from being a college student to becoming, in her words, "one of the most vilified people on the planet." "I wasn't even a fully developed person yet," she said. "You're just beginning to discover who you are at that age, and suddenly my past, present and future were being redefined by lies."

Her eventual acquittal established she had not committed the crime, but Knox said a second, more insidious narrative lingered: that she was somehow responsible for her own wrongful conviction. "For a very long time people would say, 'Fine, you didn't do it, but you made it weird. It's your fault you got wrongly convicted,'" she recalled, adding that this victim-blaming story was "actually the hardest thing to come back from."

For a roomful of women who navigate credit committees, investment committees, internal politics and external markets, Knox's experience offered a stark example of how quickly a story can harden into a reputation — and how much work it can take to reclaim it. She underscored that the stakes may be different in CRE than in a courtroom, but the underlying dynamic is the same: people will tell stories about you, and if you are not intentional about your own, their version can define your career.

Leading Through Complexity, Not Simple Stories

Seeking to understand how such a false narrative could have taken hold, Knox chose an unexpected path: she reached out to the prosecutor who had built the case against her. Rather than responding with anger, she approached him with curiosity.

"I wanted to understand why," she said. "Why did this man look at me and think, 'There's my murderer,' while looking past the actual evidence?" Through that process, Knox said she recognized how deeply people rely on familiar storylines to make sense of complex facts. "We tend to look at reality through the stories we've heard before," she told attendees. "We like very black-and-white narratives — good versus evil, purity versus darkness."

Her years in prison challenged that kind of thinking. Living alongside women who had committed serious crimes, Knox said she came to see that people are rarely defined by a single action. "I met women who had done terrible things, but they weren't necessarily evil psychopaths," she said. "They were human beings. That helped me understand the gray spaces."

That shift in perspective shaped her conversation with the prosecutor. Instead of assuming malice, she chose to accept that he believed he was pursuing justice for her murdered roommate, even as he caused profound harm. "I accepted that his intention wasn't to hurt me, even though that's what happened," Knox said. "You can hurt someone. You can make a terrible mistake. That doesn't make you an evil person."

Recognizing both the damage he had done and his humanity allowed the exchange to move beyond blame. "It required holding two truths at once — that this man was incredibly powerful and incredibly harmful, but also fragile, vulnerable and fallible," she said.

According to Knox, that ability to hold complexity without forcing a simple story is one of the greatest leadership strengths women bring to the workplace — including deal rooms, C-suites and boardrooms across commercial real estate. "We're capable of holding truths that seem to be in conflict," she said. "Being calm, knowing what the truth is, knowing who you are and what your boundaries are — that allows you to stay grounded even when someone else is trying to impose their version of reality on you."

Lessons For Women In Commercial Real Estate

For women and rising leaders in commercial real estate, Knox's message translated into a practical challenge: in a business defined by risk, relationships and perception, you cannot always control what others say about you — but you can control the story you choose to tell yourself and how you lead from that place. She suggested that resilience, authentic leadership and lasting confidence are built when professionals stop internalizing distorted narratives and start anchoring their identity in their values and choices.

Knox's keynote underscored that reputation and narrative are not soft issues for investors and executives; they are structural to influence, opportunity and capital flow. The keynote suggested that leaders who can stay grounded in their own story are better equipped to navigate conflict, manage crises and make clear-headed decisions in volatile environments.

"Being calm, knowing what the truth is, knowing who you are and what your boundaries are" is not just a personal mantra, Knox implied, but a leadership strategy that can steady teams and organizations when external narratives — from media cycles to market rumors — threaten to take over. For women building careers in a still-male-dominated industry, that kind of steadiness can make the difference between being defined by someone else's storyline and setting the terms of your own trajectory.

The session closed with a challenge that, according to attendees, resonated throughout the room: while none of us can fully control the stories others tell, each of us can choose the story we live by — and in doing so, reshape how we show up as leaders, colleagues and decision-makers in this industry.

Come back to read more coverage from our conference.

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Source: GlobeSt/ALM