Executive Search Consultants
Commercial Real Estate
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP • JUDGMENT • INTEGRITY • EXPERIENCE • RESULTS
Inquiring minds have asked… What does TCAP stand for?
Talent Capital, our stage name, was our typical response. In fact, TCAP stands for Two Chicks and A Phone, named as a descriptor of who we were upon formation: two women with a phone always within reach, with heart, experience, and a commitment to provide differentiated and distinguished real estate executive search work to clients and candidates alike. On the occasion of our 20th anniversary, we celebrate not only our history, but the derivation of our name, Two Chicks and A Phone, which feels every bit as right now as it did in 2006.
OUR PRACTICE
TCAP Associates is a retained executive search practice that focuses exclusively on the commercial real estate industry. Co-founded in 2006 by Drucilla Richards and Clara Kim, and now celebrating its 20th Anniversary, TCAP has a proven track record of excellence in completing a broad range of assignments. Our track record spans all asset classes and most-all professional functions for many different types of real estate companies: public and private, small and large, principal and intermediary, operating and development.
TCAP’s commitment to excellence and integrity is to clients and candidates alike. We don’t sell candidates to clients. We don’t sell jobs to candidates. Rather, we find fits. We are sincere in our passion to find the perfect fit between an individual candidate’s talents and career aspirations and a company’s need for human talent, both for the subject role and for the longer term.
We are stewards of our clients in the hiring markets, a responsibility we take very seriously. We represent our clients with integrity and with a keen understanding of their business and culture. We are also stewards of candidates in the hiring markets; we take this responsibility as seriously. We interact with candidates with respect, transparency, and sincerity.
We are very proud of our track record of excellent work. We measure our success not by the number of assignments completed, but rather by client satisfaction and the placed candidate’s tenure and growth trajectory at the company. The majority of our work is for repeat clients. Of particular satisfaction is that several of our clients were formerly candidates.
PRACTICE ESSENCE
Boutique
Who you see is who you get; no hand-off to junior recruiters
Client-facing; flexible in both approach and process
Small assignment load by choice
Large candidate pool given short off-limits list
Art & Science
Successful search requires both
Science: candidate identification is a methodological process; leverage of AI, LinkedIn and other online platforms makes this aspect of a search easier, faster, and more of commodity
Art: the judgment piece of candidate assessment and cultural fit; much more difficult to delegate to machine learning, and accordingly, the much higher value-add component
Although very adept at the Science: Process component, we believe it is the Art: Judgment component that differentiates us from our peers
Broad Reach in Commercial Real Estate Industry
Exclusive focus on the commercial real estate industry
Experienced with all asset classes: residential, office, retail, mixed-use, hospitality, industrial, storage
Completed assignments throughout the organizational hierarchy: c-suite to senior associate
Successful placements in the functional disciplines of investments, development, acquisitions, capital markets, portfolio and asset management, operations, finance & accounting, human resources
Geographic reach throughout the US
Proven Track Record
20+ years of search experience
Demonstrated track record of completed assignments
Majority of placed candidates earn successive promotions and have long tenure
Much of our work is repeat business
Excellent recommendations from clients and candidates
OUR TEAM
Drucilla Richards
Drucilla Richards describes herself a real estate capital markets professional who happens to do search. She believes it is her twenty years of industry experience as a transactor that differentiates the quality of her search work. She has sat in client’s shoes. She has sat in candidate’s shoes. She understands the jobs themselves, having been around all of them and having done some of them first-hand. She instinctively understands both clients’ and candidates’ needs, is a keen underwriting of both functional and cultural fit, a responsible steward of all parties’ interests, and a seasoned negotiator.
Before entering the search business, Dru held senior capital markets and investment banking positions at Trammell Crow Company, Trammell Crow Residential, Morgan Stanley and Legg Mason. She began her career as a construction lender at Citicorp Real Estate. While a partner at TCR, she worked hand-in-glove with Rob Terwilliger and led the sale of several divisions of the Company to various REITs. While an investment banker, she participated in the IPO’s of twelve REIT offerings.
Wanting more schedule flexibility after the birth of her two sons, Dru chose to pivot to the search industry, attracted by its client-facing and transactional nature, and the opportunity to provide a differentiated approach to the work itself because of her industry background and a commitment to full-cycle execution of client interface and recruitment execution (vs the standard recruiter model that bifurcates these roles).
Dru and Clara Kim Co-Founded TCAP Associates in 2006. Over the past twenty years, Dru’s body of search work has been across all functional disciplines and asset classes for a loyal cadre of premier real estate clients, including Wood Partners, Kolter Multifamily, RangeWater, JBG SMITH and GTIS Partners. Compelling aspects of her work include institutional-quality execution, premier client service, small assignment load by choice, and measurement of success, not by the number of searches completed, but by the tenure of those people placed and the quality of their advancement into positions of increasing responsibility.
Dru holds an MBA from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and a BA in economics from the University of California, Irvine, where she played women’s varsity tennis.
Clara Kim
Clara Kim brings more than 25 years of distinguished experience at the intersection of real estate and talent — spanning executive search, organizational leadership, and human capital strategy across the full spectrum of the industry.
Clara co-founded TCAP Associates with Drucilla Richards in 2006 and has recently rejoined the firm, after nearly a decade leading talent at one of the world's most prominent real estate platforms, The Related Companies.
Her executive search experience covers a broad range of disciplines — including acquisitions, asset management, capital raising, debt, development, investment banking, investment sales, principal finance, and property management — across all asset classes and geographies. Prior to TCAP, Clara held executive search roles at Rhodes Associates, Leslie Powell Associates, and Equinox Partners, building the foundation of a career defined by an instinct for talent and a deep fluency in real estate.
From 2012 to 2020, Clara served as Vice President and Head of Talent Acquisition and Development at The Related Companies, where she oversaw recruitment and talent strategy across all divisions of the global platform. In that role, she functioned as a trusted business partner to senior leadership on recruitment, employee relations, organizational development, and talent-related initiatives.
Subsequent to Related, Clara served as Vice President of Diversity and Talent Development at Howard Hughes Holdings from 2021 to 2024, where she helped build early careers and talent strategies for a more inclusive and high-performing organization. Since 2024, Clara has provided consultancy services on Human Resources transformation projects, talent acquisition and development strategy, HR executive development and workforce management to selected real estate clients; she will continue to offer these services from the TCAP platform.
Clara holds a BA in Literature and Rhetoric from Binghamton University.