Catherine Roome portrays herself as a storyteller rather than an incoming president and CEO intent on expanding her firm’s commercial real estate footprint and overall growth.

Roome is preparing to take the reins of Vancouver-based Concert and build on the legacy established by her late predecessor Christine Bergeron, who died in February after battling brain cancer.

“Her legacy is there because she built an extremely strong team and they have done an amazing job,” said Roome in a recent interview with Connect.

“My job as the CEO is to tell the story of Concert to the market.”

Roome and Bergeron were friends and knew each other for about 15 years. They would go for lunch together, particularly while the new Concert CEO was heading Technical Safety BC and the previous one was rising through the ranks to become the top executive at Vancity Credit Union.

“There were a number of times that I reached out to her to get advice and support,” said Roome.

She credits Bergeron with being a friend and mentor to many others.

“She is very missed by the leadership community,” said Roome.

Now, Roome is looking forward to taking CEO responsibilities off the shoulders of executives who have handled them for several months since Bergeron took an indefinite leave in October 2025 to deal with her health issues. Roome will officially begin her duties May 26 as Interim CEO John Dooling returns full-time to his role as a managing director and CFO.

Her recent appointment came after what the company described as a comprehensive search.

Roome indicated that she will take time to become more familiar with Concert and her new role before setting long-term goals. But she has a few initial ones.

“We are in a challenging environment in real estate, obviously, across Canada,” she said. “And, Canada is positioning itself as being open to world investment and Concert is part of that. We are part of the growth of the country because we operate in multiple markets.

“My role in support of the board is to explore opportunities to broaden our base of investors and partners, and I will be doing that through lots of places where I can tell the story of Concert’s operational fundamentals and its strong asset base.”

Over the long term, she aims to help the almost 37-year-old “value-based organization” continue to excel much longer.

“We certainly intend to be around for multiple generations to come,” she said. “Obviously, we continue to develop the assets that we have. We have some amazing fundamentals for growth and we’re going to continue to look at acquiring new assets, which requires us to seek extra capital to do that.

“We have multiple purpose built rentals that we continue to operate and we’ll support those tenants, whether they’re industrial or commercial or residential. A large part of our future is that operating excellence of those owned assets.”

Roome brings more than three decades of leadership experience spanning infrastructure, regulation and public-interest organizations. She headed Technical Safety BC for more than 10 years, and most recently was interim CEO of Atira Women’s Resource Society, a supportive housing organization.

She has considerable experience with infrastructure, including seven years as a director on the massive Site C dam’s oversight board. She fulfilled that role as part of her duties as a BC Hydro board member. While involved with Site C, Roome got to know now-retired Concert co-founded David Podmore, who was also a board director. But Roome said she did not communicate with Podmore during the hiring process.

Time will tell whether Roome’s infrastructure experiences prompt Concert to invest in large-scale projects as the federal government ramps up billions of dollars worth of massive developments.

“That’s a really good question,” replied Roome when asked whether Concert could invest in new infrastructure going forward.

“I think there’s lots of options out there for all developers and operators of assets in the country, and I don’t know what that looks like, but I think we are seeing a focus on infrastructure, on large resource-based [projects] and less of a focus on construction and residential as a driver of the economy. But I think those things are cyclical and they have to go hand-in-hand. You can’t build out a resource economy and not have places for businesses to operate or people to live.”

Roome indicated that she would need to be in her new role for a couple of months before she could answer the question more fully.

In the meantime and afterward, she will strive to bring out the best in Concert’s people.

“I have this belief that my role as a leader is to seek out that unique brilliance that exists in every person that I work with,” she said. “I really do believe in strength-based leadership and enabling people to bring their full strength and full self to the work that they do. I mean, we’re all human beings at the end of it.

“We have full lives and we want to be supported for the aspects of ourselves that are our strengths. I have a background in supporting great teams, in mentoring younger people, in helping our frontline employees really be heard and really enable their empowerment to make decisions throughout an organization.”

Based on her experience with other organizations where she has led change, Roome also believes that it’s essential to have younger employees who are “so close to the digital future and who fundamentally understand AI and how to actually use every type of digital experiences” advise the senior leadership team.

“So, we have that reverse mentoring that’s really important in today’s economy,” she said. “I’m a good listener but, maybe most importantly, I’m a very good supporter. I think that the CEO’s job is to be in there supporting people’s growth.”

Concurrently, Roome will seek to help Concert provide more benefits to the people in the communities in which it operates. The company controls more than $6.6 billion in assets and is owned by union and management pension plans and institutional investors representing more than 200,000 Canadians.

“Concert’s very embedded in the values of the communities that it serves,” she said. “That is also, I think, some of the intense magic of Concert in terms of where it has its ownership of assets and how well connected it is to what the community needs.

“We want to make sure that people’s homes continue to work for them, that people’s businesses in our industrial and commercial properties are serving those owners and serving the broader economy.”

She also aims to continue the good work of the people who have built Concert over the decades, including Podmore and late fellow co-founder Jack Poole, a legendary commercial real estate industry icon and community leader, Poole’s many accomplishments included bringing the 2010 Winter Olympics to Vancouver. He and Podmore also launched the redevelopment of the Expo Lands alongside False Creek following the 1986 world’s fair.

“I’m not coming to make it about me,” said Roome. “I really want to be the individual that’s telling an already great story and helping bring that clarity to all kinds of stakeholders, but particularly to the market. If anything, [my goal is] to be radically transparent about the gifts that Concert has and to be extremely supportive of all those partners that enable us to be a great organization.”

An engineer by profession, Roome has been involved with a number of different properties during her career. But Roome, who held senior executive and board positions with such organizations as Pulse Technologies and Prospera Credit Union, views herself as an outsider entering the CRE sector.

Thus far, the incoming Concert CEO has been “thrilled” with the way other CRE organizations have welcomed her.

“It really bodes well for how tightly this community supports each other,” she said. “It says a lot about the leadership in the sector.

“That’s been very inspiring to me.”

Pictured: New Concert Properties President and CEO Catherine Roome

Photo: Courtesy of Concert Properties