Project: Diversity

Focus on professional development

By Paul Rosta on Sep 4, 2013 in News

At a time when commercial real estate faces fierce competition for the best and brightest, forward-thinking companies understand that diversity is vital to their success. “They need smart, talented people, because this industry isn’t getting younger; it’s getting older,” argues Gregg McCort, executive director of Project REAP, a real estate training program for minority professionals. Nevertheless, characteristics that marked commercial real estate for much of its history—it is largely family owned, male and white—pose deeply embedded challenges to change. Project REAP estimates that members of minority groups—among them African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans—account for only about 1 percent of commercial real estate professionals nationwide.

Further complicating efforts to broaden the industry’s talent pool, job reductions during the Great Recession decreased opportunities across the board and caused promising candidates of every background to set their sights on other careers.

Educational programs are providing avenues for talented minority professionals to enter the industry. Project REAP—the acronym stands for Real Estate Associates Program—sponsors a number of training programs that each draw several dozen young minority professionals. So far, it has organized sessions in New York City, Cleveland and Los Angeles, and a debut program in Dallas is on the radar for 2014. Backed by a broad coalition of companies and industry associations, the program attracts a variety of professional backgrounds and often those with advanced degrees.

University programs, too, are important conduits. At the University of Southern California, the Ross Minority Program in Real Estate trains participants to work in development in underserved communities. More than 700 people have completed the program since 1993, which is expanding into San Diego this fall, and its alumni are having an impact on their communities. Vanessa Delgado, for instance, heads the development team at Los Angeles-based Primestor Development Inc., which specializes in developing retail projects for Latino neighborhoods.

Such success stories are encouraging, but the pace of change remains slow. “Young people aren’t moving up the ladder into management roles as much as we’d like to see,” remarked Stan Ross, founder of the Ross Minority Program and chairman of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate. MInority professionals sometimes feel that striking out on their own offers a faster path to success than joining a company. The perception reduces the pool of minority professionals available to the industry, he argued.

Effective as training programs can be, experts say that broadening the industry’s talent pool requires more than recruitment. Active efforts at inclusion within the company are also important, and they require support from company leadership to succeed. Such efforts may include affinity groups or other initiatives. Forest City Enterprises Inc. gives those groups an added mission by soliciting ideas about strategy, and as part of its next-generation preparation, it is identifying women and minorities who demonstrate leadership potential. It also pursues diversity in its vendor pool and supports nonprofit groups that serve communities where the company invests and develops.

Assigning a senior manager to oversee diversity efforts provides practical benefits while sending a message about the company’s commitment. Martha Bayer, global director for talent strategy and diversity at CBRE Group Inc., points to her own newly created position as an example. She is charged with refreshing CBRE’s multi-faceted diversity efforts, which range from sponsoring in-house affinity groups and programs like Project REAP to vendor diversity and community service.

In tandem with commercial real estate’s own diversity initiatives, the industry’s customers have an opportunity to contribute to the cause. “One of the things I think would be helpful would be for the corporations (that are) major users of real estate space … to be aware of it as a strategy that could benefit their organizations,” said Lamont Blackstone, chairman of Project REAP, citing Wal-Mart Inc. as an example of a major corporation that has welcomed minorities on its in-house real estate team.

Along with persistent, comprehensive efforts to make the industry more inclusive, time may prove to be diversity’s best ally. As more professionals of varied backgrounds continue to make a mark on the industry, it will increasingly mirror the nation’s own diversity, McCort predicts: “When you get enough people with enough credentials and they’re impressive, you will see incremental progress.”

Paul Rosta is senior editor at Commercial Property Executive. He wrote about diversity efforts for the July 2013 issue of CPE.