Tod McGrath and Jim Heid, FASLA Named 2025 Spaulding Award Winners at CRE’s 40th Anniversary Celebration
June 21, 2025 | Cambridge, MA — The MIT Center for Real Estate (CRE) proudly honored Tod McGrath and Jim Heid, FASLA MSRED ’94, with the 2025 Spaulding Award during its 40th Anniversary celebration, recognizing two transformative figures whose work has reshaped real estate education and practice.
The Spaulding Award, presented annually, celebrates individuals whose contributions to the real estate profession and the Center have been marked by outstanding service, leadership, and impact. This year’s recipients exemplify those ideals.
Tod McGrath: A Pillar of the Center’s Legacy
Tod McGrath has, as described by nominators, “perpetual drive and persistent energy in making the Center a better place”. For decades, McGrath has been a central figure at the Center: an educator, mentor, and career advisor. While not an MSRED alum, he completed doctoral coursework under Professor Bill Wheaton and has created and taught countless hours of curriculum.
He is the longtime lecturer of Real Estate Ventures I & II (11.351 and 11.352), two rigorous and impactful courses in the Master of Science in Real Estate Development (MSRED) program. In these, students learn to navigate and negotiate the principal agreements that underpin real estate development—everything from purchase and sale contracts to mezzanine financing and loan workouts—while collaborating with attorneys and peers from NYU and Columbia. The Ventures series is regarded as one of the program’s most practical and professionally transformative experiences.
Professionally, McGrath has decades of experience in real estate finance, strategy, and investment. He is currently Vice President of Finance at Boston Properties (BxP). In addition to former roles as President of advisoRE, LLC, Senior Vice President at McCall & Almy and portfolio strategist at Winthrop Financial Associates – he has also served as an expert witness and sits on the Hingham Planning Board.
With all of that, his energy and passion have continued to motivate and teach generations of real estate professionals. “Tod is a champion for the CRE students and alumni,” shared one nominator. “His efforts, his passion, his selflessness will never be matched.”
Beyond the classroom and boardroom, McGrath is celebrated for his ability to keep alumni engaged—bringing them back to campus years later into the classroom, and into conversation with current students. He revived The Case Competition, a hallmark MSRED event, after years of absence. His deep commitment to the CRE community, paired with his professional expertise and generosity of spirit, has made him a foundational figure in the life of the Center.
Upon receiving the award, McGrath offered heartfelt thanks: “Thank you to everyone—I love you all.”
Jim Heid, FASLA: Advancing a Human-Scaled Vision for Development
Jim Heid, MSRED ’94, is a national leader in place-based, community-oriented development. Through his award-winning projects like River House in Healdsburg, CA, and Craftwork, an adaptive reuse coworking space, Heid has shown what it means to practice real estate with creativity, purpose, and care.
In 2011, Heid and colleague Howard Kozloff began questioning why the industry was so heavily focused on large-scale, capital-intensive projects. Believing there was power in finer-grained, entrepreneurial development, they launched the first Small Scale Developers Forum in 2012. What started as a conversation among a few like-minded peers has grown into a national movement—more than 700 participants across 20 cities—anchored in the belief that Small is not only viable but vital to the future of the built environment.
Building Small is now a platform, book, and conference series dedicated to advancing small-scale development. Through Heids work, he has elevated new voices, created opportunities for local ownership, and reimagined what real estate can be when it’s grounded in community and values. Scholarships to his conferences have further widened access, helping a new generation of developers see themselves in the industry.
“Jim is a great steward of the industry and cares deeply about the built environment,” noted one nominator.
In accepting the award, Heid said:
“This award is deeply meaningful to me because it affirms that Building Small is a powerful idea capturing imagination across the built environment industry. The Spaulding recognition demonstrates that a career in real estate does not have to focus just on project size but also values. Human-scaled development. Local ownership. Entrepreneurial approaches. And creating long-term outcomes that are additive, rather than extractive to their communities. To be recognized by MIT, where so many big ideas are born, reinforces that thoughtful, place-based development has a vital place in the future of real estate.”
Together, McGrath and Heid represent two distinct but deeply aligned paths in real estate—one rooted in education and mentorship, the other in innovation and community. Their contributions of service to the industry were gladly celebrated during the Center’s milestone 40th Anniversary.
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