From the Navy to the C-Suite: The Making of a Multifamily Leader
Breeden Construction’s Angie Loew speaks openly about the choices, sacrifices and uncertainty behind a career that was anything but planned.
Career paths often look more deliberate in hindsight than they felt while unfolding. Angie Loew’s didn’t begin with a plant to work in accounting, construction or multifamily. It began with a decision to leave rural Iowa and join the U.S. Navy.
In 2004, while completing her accounting degree and raising her son, she took her first accounting job at The Breeden Co. Four promotions later, she serves as vice president & CFO, with responsibilities spanning the company’s multifamily projects and broader construction business. as her role evolved from accounting into leadership.
In a candid conversation with Multi-Housing News, Loew reflects on the sacrifices behind that progression, the challenges that tested her confidence and the turning point that helped her see herself as a leader.
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You joined the U.S. Navy at 18. What led you to that decision and how did that experience shape you?
Loew: In a small town in Iowa, in 1992, I was entering my senior year of high school. I was an above-average student, but unlike many of my classmates, I had no real plan for what came next. I only knew one thing for certain: I was ready to leave rural Iowa.
I applied to and was accepted by a couple of Midwestern colleges, but the reality of paying for school quickly set in. College was expensive and I needed to find another way. That search led me to information about the GI Bill and, eventually, to a decision that would completely change the course of my life.
My father and brother had both served in the U.S. Marine Corps, so I knew one thing for sure: I wasn’t joining the Marines. The Navy, however, seemed to offer the best opportunity for what I was looking for: a way to leave home, see the world, gain an education and build a future for myself.
At 18, I left my hometown and never moved back. The Navy taught me countless lessons, but one lesson has had a greater impact on my life than all the others: independence. I learned how to rely on myself, take ownership of what needed to be done and, perhaps most importantly, finish what I started. I learned to do things swiftly, correctly and without waiting for someone else to step in and solve the problem …
To this day, I am fiercely independent. Sometimes I wonder if I chose the Navy or if the Navy found me at exactly the right moment in my life. Either way, it gave me the foundation for nearly everything I’ve accomplished since.
You initially planned to study business management. What changed your direction and drew you to accounting?
Loew: I was actually drawn to business more than accounting. I knew one thing for certain: I wanted to make money and build a career. I just wasn’t entirely sure what that career would look like yet.
In 2000, I started my education at Tidewater Community College in downtown Norfolk. My plan was straightforward: Complete my general education requirements at TCC, transfer to Old Dominion University and finish a bachelor’s degree in business management.
Then accounting happened.
As part of my associate’s degree program, I was required to take Accounting 101 and 102. I didn’t expect much from those classes, but I quickly discovered that I actually enjoyed the concepts. I liked the structure, the problem-solving and the way the numbers told a story about how a business actually worked. What started as a couple of required courses turned into something much more significant …
During what would traditionally have been a student’s second year of college, I seriously questioned my decision to pursue accounting. I hated tax. More importantly, I had convinced myself that there was really only one path to success in accounting: Earn a CPA license and go to work in tax after graduation.
That didn’t sound like the career I wanted. At the time, I had no idea how limited my view of the accounting profession actually was. I certainly couldn’t have imagined that one job opportunity would completely change that perspective.
Then I was hired by a property management and development company I had never heard of. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that company was about to introduce me to an entirely different side of accounting—and ultimately change the direction of my career.
While attending college, you were also working full time and raising your son. What was that period of your life really like?
Loew: I was working full time while going to school nights and weekends, doing whatever I needed to do to make ends meet, raise my son and give him as much of a sense of normalcy as I could.
It wasn’t easy. I have six siblings. None of them—and neither of my parents—lived anywhere nearby. There was no family support system just down the road, no one I could call to take over when life became overwhelming. For the most part, I was navigating it on my own. I could have packed up, moved back to rural Iowa and made life easier in some ways. But I knew that wasn’t where I wanted to be. I had left Iowa for a reason and I was determined to build a different future for myself and my son.
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There were sacrifices. I wasn’t always as present for my son as I wanted to be and that is something I still think about. But every late night, every weekend spent studying and every exhausted morning had a purpose.
Five years after I started, I earned my bachelor’s degree. I didn’t earn it under ideal circumstances. I earned it while working full time, raising a child, paying the bills and figuring things out largely on my own. That degree represented far more than an education. It represented a promise—to myself and to my son—that we were going to build a future where we would always be able to take care of ourselves.
You joined The Breeden Co. in 2004 while still finishing your bachelor’s degree. What do you remember about starting your first accounting job and what did you expect from it at that time?
Loew: I was still two semesters away from earning my bachelor’s degree. I was also stepping into something completely new: my first accounting job.
Until that point, accounting had existed mostly on paper for me. I understood the concepts from textbooks and classrooms, but I had no idea what accounting looked like when the numbers were real, the deadlines were real and someone was actually depending on me to get it right. I was excited and, honestly, a little intimidated.
I was even surprised when Breeden called me back after my interview. The interview lasted an hour and a half and by the time I walked out, I was exhausted. I remember thinking: “Well, I guess we’ll see how that went.”
Apparently, it went better than I thought. I had answered the accounting questions correctly and I was offered a position as a bookkeeper. It wasn’t a glamorous title, but to me, it was an opportunity to finally take everything I had been learning in the classroom and figure out how it worked in the real world.
At the time, I had no idea where that job would lead me … I was simply trying to get through the next semester, do a good job and keep moving forward.
How did you find your way into the industry and what has kept the work interesting?
Loew: When I first entered accounting, I wasn’t focused on any particular industry. In fact, I was fairly certain about one thing: I did not want to spend my career in a public accounting firm doing taxes.
Construction and development weren’t even on my radar. I knew virtually nothing about the industry when I started at Breeden. Everything I know about construction and development, I learned after walking through those doors.
My education in the industry really began when I was promoted to staff accountant and took over the construction general ledgers. I was learning how an actual construction and development business operated and how complicated it could be behind the scenes.
Multifamily construction is our primary focus, but it certainly isn’t our only one. And one of the things I enjoy most about the industry is that no two projects are exactly alike. Every project brings something new: different financing structures, new ownership groups to integrate, unique contract requirements, changing reporting expectations, and a new set of problems to solve. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, the next project introduces something you haven’t encountered before.
Construction and finance have historically been male-dominated fields. What was it like building your career in those environments, particularly as you moved into leadership?
Loew: I have been fortunate to feel completely supported by Breeden’s leadership throughout my career. That support has given me the confidence and opportunity to grow. But not every challenge has come from the business itself. At times, I have had to navigate employees who were less comfortable taking direction from a woman in a position of authority.
Those situations were not always easy. There were times when advice or direction from me was questioned or not given the same consideration it might have received from a male leader. Rather than allowing those experiences to undermine my confidence, I chose to let my knowledge, preparation and results speak for themselves.
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I am a strong and independent person by nature, and I learned early in my career that I could not spend my time worrying about whether someone was comfortable with my position. My responsibility was to prove competence through consistency and leadership. I made it a priority to know my business, understand the policies and be able to stand behind the decisions I made…
Being a woman in a male-dominated industry has occasionally meant having to prove myself twice. But those experiences have also made me a stronger leader. They taught me to be confident, firm and willing to stand my ground while still listening to others…
As your responsibilities expanded, was there a particular transition when you began to see yourself as someone who could reach the executive level?
Loew: It wasn’t until we were a couple of years into taking on third-party construction work that I began to see my career differently.
As the business grew, so did the complexity of the accounting. Eventually, I reached the point where I could no longer do everything myself. I needed staff to support the accounting functions, which meant I had to stop thinking solely about getting the work done and start thinking about building a team, creating systems and leading a department. That was the turning point.
I began creating accounting and internal control policies from the ground up. I developed processes, built a department and put controls in place to make sure the construction company was operating within GAAP while also staying within Breeden’s expectations for risk and accountability. I wasn’t handed a roadmap. I had to build the road while I was driving on it.
And somewhere in that process, I realized something I hadn’t seriously considered before: I might actually have a shot at reaching the executive level. Until then, I had been focused on becoming a better accountant. Now I was learning how to become a leader. I was no longer just responsible for the numbers on the page. I was responsible for creating the structure behind those numbers, developing people, managing risk and helping the business operate more effectively.
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Spending more than two decades with one company is increasingly unusual. What made Breeden a place where you wanted to build your career?
Loew: Breeden has been much more than a place where I built a career. It has been a place that invested in me as a person.
They didn’t just tell me they supported my goals—they showed me. When I needed to finish my bachelor’s degree, they worked with me. When life brought family hardships, they worked with me again. There were countless little accommodations along the way that may not have seemed significant individually, but together they made an enormous difference…
And then something happened that made the story come full circle. After my son graduated from high school and spent a short time in college, he came to work for Breeden. This year, he is celebrating his 11th year as a Breeden employee. The company that supported me as a young single parent ultimately became a place where my son could build his own career. I don’t think I could have imagined that when I walked through the doors all those years ago…
If you could speak to the younger version of yourself who was working full time, attending school at night and raising her son, what would you want her to know?
Loew: If I could speak to the younger version of myself, I would tell her exactly what I was telling myself back then: Just keep going.
There will be days when you feel overwhelmed. There will be moments when you question whether you’re on the right path, whether you’re doing enough, or whether things will ever get easier.
This too shall pass.
The difficult seasons will eventually become memories. The things that feel impossible today will become lessons you carry with you tomorrow. You won’t always understand why you’re going through something while you’re in the middle of it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t shaping you.
You don’t need to have everything figured out. You just need to take the next step. Trust yourself.
