Diane Batayeh
When she was accepted to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Diane Batayeh recalls that she vacillated about going. As one of seven children of Middle Eastern immigrants in southwest Detroit, she worried about what her parents wound think. “Moving out of the house before you were married? It was unheard of,” she says.
Diane Batayeh, CEO, Village Green
When she shared her concerns with her first mentor—LeRoy Rowley, her band teacher—his response was one she would remember for the rest of her life: “What the hell are you thinking? Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Get out, you have to go.”
Now, as CEO of Village Green, Batayeh carries these words as her mantra and shares them with young people in her organization. “Be brave,” she says, “you will never regret that.”
Batayeh began her career at Village Green in 1980 as a part-time sales consultant in the building where she lived while attending the University of Michigan and worked her way up through the management company before expanding into positions in the other operating companies. Over 40 years with Village Green, she has worked in a wide variety of positions: sales, management operations, marketing, acquisitions, dispositions, development, market research, finance, and construction. This culminated in her appointment as chief operating officer in 2011, president and chief operating officer in 2014, and CEO in 2017.
When COVID-19 hit, the third-party manager already had the infrastructure in place to pivot entirely to virtual operations. Over the first six months of the pandemic, Batayeh met daily with a task force of 22 stakeholders, tweaking the company’s response and making sure the needs of residents, associates, partners, and owners were all met. “The key from day one was being proactive, total transparency, [and] leading with empathy,” she says.
Moving forward, Batayeh aims to keep improving the company’s technological advancement, with the goal of “raising the bar” on sustainability and value profitability.
To this end, the company has formed a committee focused on vetting new tech products to determine whether they would benefit the company before they are ultimately adopted. “We want people to be proud to work at Village Green, to be affiliated with Village Green, and that’s my key goal,” Batayeh says. “It’s easy to say, hard to achieve. We’re just trying to be aware of what’s out there.”
