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"You Have to Outwork the Room": Ladan Hosseinzadeh Sadeghi on Breaking Barriers in Canadian Real Estate
"You Have to Outwork the Room": Ladan Hosseinzadeh Sadeghi on Breaking Barriers in Canadian Real Estate
A candid conversation with the President & CEO of Sky Property Group Inc. on grit, vision, and what it truly takes to lead in one of Canada's most demanding industries.
TORONTO, ONTARIO / ACCESS Newswire / February 25, 2026 / She arrives precisely on time - a detail that feels less like habit and more like a statement. Ladan Hosseinzadeh Sadeghi, President & CEO of Sky Property Group Inc., has built her career in one of Toronto's most competitive arenas: large-scale land assembly and high-rise development across the Greater Toronto Area. But her path here began somewhere entirely different - at a hospital bedside, in a nurse's uniform.
We sat down with Ladan to talk about the journey, the walls she had to push through, and what she believes the future holds for women in Canadian real estate.
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Q: You started your career as a registered nurse. That's a significant pivot to real estate development. What made you make that leap?
A: Nursing shaped me more than I realized at the time. It taught me discipline, it taught me how to read a room - how to read people - and it showed me what it means to work under pressure when the stakes are genuinely high. When I transitioned to real estate in the early 1990s, I wasn't leaving that training behind. I was taking it with me.
The leap felt significant from the outside, but from the inside it was more of a slow pull. I had always been drawn to building things, to creating something that lasts. Real estate, especially development at the scale I was interested in, felt like the highest-order version of that. You're not just buying and selling - you're reshaping communities. That was compelling to me.
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Q: The early 1990s in Toronto was a difficult time to enter real estate, never mind as a woman. What was that environment like?
A: Honest answer? It was hard. The industry was - and in many ways still is - dominated by men, and there was a very particular culture around who got taken seriously, who got the calls returned, who was invited into the room. I was a woman, I was an immigrant, and I was new to the industry. That's three strikes before you've said a word.
But here's what I learned early: you can spend your energy resenting the room, or you can spend it outworking the room. I chose the latter. I made myself impossible to ignore by simply knowing more, preparing more, and delivering more than anyone expected. That's not a comfortable answer - it puts the burden on the person who's already disadvantaged - but it was my reality, and it worked.
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Q: Were there specific moments where you felt that bias most acutely?
A: Of course. There were deals where I'd walk into a negotiation and watch the other side direct every comment to my male colleague, even when I was the decision-maker. There were lenders and partners who needed to be convinced - not of the deal, but of me. It gets exhausting.
What I remind myself, and what I tell younger women, is that every time you close a deal in that environment, you make the next one easier. Not just for yourself, but for the woman who comes after you. You're changing the data set. When I eventually had enough of a track record that the skepticism faded, it felt like a collective win, not just a personal one.
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Q: Sky Property Group has grown into a major force in GTA land assembly and high-rise development. How do you describe what the company actually does for people who aren't in the industry?
A: We find land - often multiple adjacent properties that need to be assembled into a single parcel - and we create the conditions for significant vertical development. In a city like Toronto, where the pressure for housing is extraordinary and the available land is scarce, that work is genuinely critical. We're not filling a market gap; we're helping create the supply that the city desperately needs.
At any given time, we have multiple projects in various stages - from initial assembly and zoning work through to working with development partners to see towers rise. It's a long game. Some of these projects span a decade from first acquisition to completion. You have to love the process, not just the outcome.
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Q: What advice do you give to women who are trying to build careers - or companies - in real estate today?
A: Three things. First, get fluent in the numbers. Not just financially literate - fluent. You need to be able to walk into any room and command the financial conversation. That's where credibility lives in this industry, and no one can take it away from you once you have it.
Second, build relationships before you need them. This business runs on trust and connections, and those things take years to develop. Start now, even if you don't see an immediate return.
Third - and this one might sound unusual - stay humble about what you don't know. The best deals I've ever passed on were the ones I recognized early as being beyond my expertise at that moment. Arrogance is expensive in real estate.
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Q: What does the landscape look like for women in real estate leadership today versus when you started?
A: It's better. Genuinely better. I see women in senior positions at developers, at lenders, at planning departments. The pipeline is broader. But we haven't solved it - not even close. At the C-suite level, at the ownership level, in the rooms where the really large decisions get made, the imbalance is still significant.
What I hope Sky Property Group represents, among other things, is proof of concept. That a woman-led company can operate at this scale, in this market, and do it well. If that changes one investor's assumption or opens one door for one young woman, then it matters.
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Q: What's your vision for Sky Property Group over the next decade?
A: Continued growth in the GTA, with a sharper focus on transit-connected corridors where density makes the most sense for the communities we're building in. We've also expanded internationally - we have a presence in Dubai now, which has been a fascinating chapter - and I see that growing as well.
But the bigger vision is really about legacy. I want Sky Property Group to be the kind of company that's known not just for what it built, but for how it built - with integrity, with care for the communities affected, and with a team that reflects the diversity of the city we work in.
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Contact Information
Ladan Hosseinzadeh Sadeghi
[email protected]
SOURCE: Sky Property Group Inc.
View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire
L.Girard--SMC
