NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate

Charles Bagli, The New York Times (moderator)
Bagli has covered the intersection of real estate and politics for 22 yrs, the last 13 as a reporter for The New York Times.  Prior to that he worked for the New York Observer.  He has written about the sale of Stuyvesant Town, the rebuilding of ground zero, the MTA's debacle at 2 Broadway, and the mayor's effort to build a stadium on the Far West Side of Manhattan. He has also covered the bid-rigging scandal in interior construction industry and the corruption scandal among city assessors. Bagli has written for the Brooklyn Phoenix, The Tampa Tribune, and The Nation. In another life, he drove a transit bus, worked as a Kmart janitor and tended the furnaces at a tool plant.

Eliot Brown, The New York Observer
Brown is the New York Observer’s economic development reporter, covering planning, housing policy, and large-scale development for the paper.  He previously served as the commercial real estate reporter at the Observer, and as the real estate reporter at the New York Sun.  Prior to arriving in New York, he worked at the Journal Star in Peoria, Illinois.

Amanda Fung, Crain’s New York Business
Fung covers residential real estate and the outside boroughs for Crain’s New York Business. Before taking on those beats, she spent three years covering technology and telecommunications for the newsroom. Before joining Crain’s, Amanda was a reporter for Institutional Investor News, where she covered wealth management and private banking. She began her business journalism career at the American Banker after becoming a victim of the dot com crash in 2000. That year, after graduating from New York University, she took a job as an editorial assistant at a local Web start-up for parenting site ClubMom, now called CafeMom. Since 2002, Amanda has been a member of the Young Executive Board for iMentor, a Manhattan-based non-profit that strives to improve the lives of underprivileged, young adults through email-based mentoring and education. Amanda was born and raised in New York City.

David Jones, The Real Deal
Jones, an online and print reporter for The Real Deal, is an award-winning freelance journalist with more than 20 years experience in the field. Since joining The Real Deal in 2007, he has covered a wide range of stories, including Stuyvesant Town, the foreclosure of the Sheffield57 and Rector Square condominiums, the condo conversions of the Apthorp and Manhattan House, and the rezoning of 125th Street in Harlem. As a freelance writer, David has been published by The New York Times, Newsday, The Nation, Hemispheres, In These Times, and City Limits. He previously worked as an online reporter for Crain's New York Business and a staff writer for Bloomberg Business News and The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. In 2003, he was the recipient of the George Washington Williams Fellowship by the Independent Press Association. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

Tom Topousis, The New York Post
Topousis has been a staff writer and a member of the metropolitan staff at The Post since 1995. He has covered politics, government, transportation, housing, and aspects of the real estate industry in New York City. Before joining The Post, he was a reporter at the Bergen Record, USA Today; The Poughkeepsie Journal; the Newburgh Evening News; and the Times Herald-Record. He majored in anthropology at the State University of New York at New Paltz.