Started in fashion. Detoured through oil fields. Built half of Downtown Dallas along the way.
Photographed for PaperCity Magazine.
Tanya Ragan does not fit the mold of a Dallas Commercial Real Estate developer. That is the point.
She started her career on Seventh Avenue, working in New York fashion. She detoured into oil and gas, learning how Texas talks about money and risk. Then she landed in Downtown Dallas and never left.
Twenty years later, Wildcat Management is one of the most consistently honored Commercial Real Estate firms in North Texas. Tanya bought when nobody wanted Downtown. She held when everyone said leave. She rebuilt the West End block by block.
She wrote the book on it, literally. Blaze Your Own Trail is the playbook for women who refuse to wait their turn.
I never asked for permission to develop Downtown Dallas. I just kept buying the buildings everyone else gave up on.
Today she is selling the historic Purse Building, an iconic six story 1905 landmark on Elm Street, to international investors. She is breaking ground on the next chapter of the West End. And she is louder than ever about why women belong in the rooms where the deals get done.
