WE WERE ONE OF THE FIRST firms to put disciplines like finance, construction, and law together, under one roof, with one profit and loss statement. We built best-in-breed integrated departments and then blurred the lines between them to form one team with the versatility and expertise to solve a client's capital-expansion challenges with any tool. It's about having integrated people, versatile enough to think in any discipline.

THIS IS OUR HIRING PHILOSOPHY. We want the smartest, brightest, most talented people in this industry. We surround ourselves with good people who preserve our precious culture just by coming in each day. And we found that people who live their lives a few degrees outside of the mainstream are the best people for these pursuits. Plus they make life a little more interesting.

SUSTAINABILITY IS NOT JUST ABOUT “LEED” AND “GREEN” BUILDING. To get universities working, a sustainable business model is needed. Universities must recognize that the future will not be like the past. There will be a completely different pattern of investment, development, programming and use. To remain competitive, universities must incorporate sustainable business strategies, and they must do it sooner rather than later.

YOU WILL NOT FIND A MORE DEDICATED INVESTMENT FIRM, more obsessed with measurement and results, than Mantra. And we hear new clients say so all the time. Measurement is a core value of ours. For every investment we make, we also create custom-built tools that help us analyze results, from real-time dashboards to quarterly scorecards. We not only know the effectiveness of an investment, but also the effectiveness on our client's business. We're not afraid to keep score. We're afraid not to.

WE ARE OPINIONATED, BUT WE ARE ALSO COLLABORATIVE. We are passionate, but we are also great listeners. We never forget that you know your business better than we do. But we also never forget that we know our business better than just about anyone else. There's a built-in tension in any relationship surrounding the implementation of new solutions. We don't resist that. We embrace it. To us, it doesn't matter where a new solution comes from. We work hard together, play hard together and, most importantly, we achieve greatness together.