Kirsty Greer is a ULI member based in Colorado. Greer is a member of the Women’s Leadership Initiative and the Urban Development and Mixed-Use Council. She is an executive vice president at McWhinney, a real estate investment and development firm.
I recently published an essay in a local Commercial Real Estate journal about a professional mentor of mine, Don MacKenzie. He died suddenly in July of 2020. Don was an important member of the Colorado commercial real estate community and was a supremely talented developer of multifamily housing. He engendered in me and so many other passionate young developers and aspiring industry leaders in commercial real estate a deep love for our business. He taught us that anyone who worked hard enough could find creativity, inspiration, joy, financial reward, and true community impact in a career in real estate development.
Though I set out to write about Don in the essay, as I wrote it, it shifted to be less memoriam and more an exploration of our significant and mutually valued relationship. In writing the essay, I also found myself thinking about and exploring the meaning of mentorship. After the essay was published, I heard from many people who knew Don. Personal connections to Don were varied but a common theme that emerged was his strong commitment to his employees, colleagues, and friends. Women, men, young, and old all experienced Don as a unique character, a larger-than-life figure, and someone who always made it a priority to help other people succeed.
Several people also reached out to me, not because they knew Don, but to express gratitude that my essay reminded them of their experiences with leaders and champions in their own careers. As it turns out, I am not the only one with drive and talent who still needs the help of a devoted mentor in order to find success. A female colleague of mine wrote to me saying, “I didn’t know Don, but your essay made me realize how important my own mentors have been in my career.” This particular note got me thinking about the importance of mentors for all of us, both finding them and becoming them. Further, I began to wonder what the professional outcomes were for people, particularly women like me, in commercial real estate who were never able to benefit from a personal guide along the way. Are there women in commercial real estate with passion and dedication who have left the industry or simply given up not because of a lack of talent but because of the absence of a mentor or champion?
It is common knowledge that the recruitment, presence, and promotion of females in the commercial real estate industry is sorely lacking. My particular role in development and project management seems especially underrepresented by females. In business meetings (video conferences these days), I often glance around the room to see if I am the only woman in attendance. I am typically either the only female or one of the very few females represented. There is no disputing that women, who at this point represent more than half of the country’s college-educated workforce and a large percentage of professionals with doctoral and graduate degrees, are noticeably missing from commercial real estate. But why should we care?
Commercial Real Estate professionals influence the look, feel, and priorities of our built environment. The cities and towns where we live, where our children will grow up, and where we will eventually grow old, are being imagined every day without significant input by women. Architects, developers, brokers, and finance professionals are impacting human experiences by shaping what is being built and for whom. If women are not represented in these roles their voices and perspectives will not be heard in the dialogue surrounding one of the most important challenges facing our planet: Land Use. This lack of representation and the negative impacts it could have on our built environment concerns me enough to want to understand more about why women do not enter commercial real estate or, if they do, why some choose to leave before reaching more impactful senior roles. Could it be due in part to a crisis of mentorship?
There are several studies recently published that paint a picture of the overall makeup of the Commercial Real Estate industry and who might be represented or not represented within its ranks. Commercial Real Estate Women, or CREW, released a study in 2020 called the 2020 CREW Network Benchmark Study: Gender and Diversity in Commercial Real Estate. Just under 3,000 real estate professionals participated in the study in which CREW and its sponsors sought to gather data in order to “guide women, Black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) and other diverse groups of people striving to advance their careers in the industry, inform companies and managers about the values and priorities of their employees, and enhance the research and data for organizations that desire greater diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).”
A few results jump out at me as important findings:
- The overall representation of women in Commercial Real Estate has remained mostly stagnant over the past 15 years at 36 percent. This number includes asset management (i.e. property management), finance, development, and brokerage.
- Women in development decreased from 36 percent to 34 percent since 2015.
- The number of women respondents occupying the C-suite, 9 percent, remained unchanged in the last 10 years.
- The number of women respondents occupying senior vice president, managing director, or partner level positions decreased from 27 percent to 22 percent in the last 10 years.
- Women respondents reported that their career or compensation had been adversely affected by family status, i.e. children, at a higher percentage than men (21 percent vs 8 percent).
- On average, women respondents are being paid 10 percent less than male respondents.
The above findings paint a picture of a significant lack of female representation in all stages of a career in commercial real estate. Women are not entering the field, are not staying in the field once there, and are not rising through the ranks. Women are experiencing more discrimination in the form of family status and lower compensation. There are likely multiple factors that contribute to this imbalance. Why aren’t women entering commercial real estate? Why are they so underrepresented at the C-suite level? Let’s examine the possibilities for each phase in a woman’s career with particular attention paid to the question of mentorship.
The Bottom of the Ladder
Real estate development and management is a complicated and nuanced endeavor with end results that benefit from a wide variety of educational backgrounds including architecture, engineering, finance, business, and computer science. According to data published in 2018 by the National Center for Education Statistics, women are underrepresented in undergraduate programs in all areas of study except health, psychology, biology, and social sciences. Business and engineering degrees were predominantly completed by men. For graduate programs, men in all programs of study barring education and health outnumbered women. Though other non-relevant degrees will clearly be represented in our industry (I have a bachelor’s degree in Biology, for example), if we assume that architecture, engineering, finance, business, and computer science are the degrees that could most effectively lead to a career in Commercial Real Estate, women appear to be less engaged in these programs and in careers in real estate.
To ensure that women are represented in our field, we clearly need to get more of them drawn to what we do earlier on in their lives. Gender biases in education from counselors and teachers and even family members could be at play in directing young women towards traditional education and health care professions, but it could also be a matter of a simple lack of information about and familiarity with these (architecture, engineering, finance, business, and computer science) higher education programs and their options for successful careers in real estate. If young women are shown examples of successful female leaders in any industry, they may be more likely to explore the possibilities for themselves. Outreach by female leaders in commercial real estate could provide a solid introduction to the field for students and new hires and begin the process for them of early mentorship and guidance. Negative stories and images carried in popular culture create harmful impressions of the real estate industry in general. It is unfortunate that in the 21st century, our industry continues to be seen as and, in truth, can be experienced as a “boys club.” What an immediate deterrent it may be for young women who might have an interest in or curiosity about the field of real estate. Guiding women toward a career in commercial real estate can be as simple and straightforward as getting diverse, successful female leaders to share their stories and successes in public and educational forums.
Climbing the Ladder
Real estate development is a highly competitive, exciting, and a high-stakes business. Women and men alike, if they are to survive or succeed in our industry need to be thick-skinned, passionate about their work, and able to thrive under high-pressure conditions. Unquestionably, women looking to make a mark and reach lofty career heights in real estate development, have faced roadblocks because of their gender or the perceived limitations of their gender. This discrimination can happen in direct or overt ways, but in my experience, it is more often indirect and covert.
As noted from the CREW research above, women respondents feel more adversely affected by family status than men do. If I had been a respondent to the CREW survey, my own experiences would have placed me within the percentage of women who felt that my career has been negatively impacted by having a family. When I became a mother in 2013, I was no longer able to dedicate myself to work in the same way I was before having a child. I was unable to travel for work as often, had to leave the office earlier and my weekends became off limits to my employer. Leadership at the company I worked for at the time was all male. In fact, the CEO affectionately and unashamedly referred to the C-suite as “the guys”. I missed an evening team building event once because my son was sick; my boss at the time told me the next day he was “disappointed” in me for not making him a higher priority.
Another important result from the CREW survey is the surprisingly low amount of respondents, both male and female, whose first supervisor at their current company was female. Only 23 percent reported having a female supervisor at the beginning phases of their career. I have personally never had a female boss or supervisor. Don MacKenzie, my mentor, was uniquely committed to seeing women succeed in the field he loved. Don, a man who worked at empathizing with and providing guidance to aspiring female real estate developers was an exception. Maybe the difficulty some women experience when trying to balance life and work would be felt differently if there were more supervisors who have experienced similar challenges. Women supervisors could comprehend, advise, and shepherd in a more effective way than a typical male supervisor could for their female team members. Parameters could be established around corporate culture or options for a work/life balance in a different way if the boss or the boss’s boss were female. The mentorship a female supervisor could offer a female employee might just be more effective at keeping women in real estate and encouraging them to climb the ladder, despite frustrations and setbacks.
The Top of the Ladder
There are very few females represented at the C-suite level in any industry. Commercial Real Estate is no exception. According to a recent article from Forbes,
“An analysis by…the Executive Leadership Outlook 2020, found more than half of organizations didn’t assess any female candidates during CEO searches. And when only one woman was in line for a CEO position, she never landed the position. Women are a true minority for top leadership jobs. The study found gender is the largest demographic disparity. Female candidates represented only 25 percent of executive candidates and 19 percent of C-suite candidates.”
According to the previously mentioned CREW study, only 9 percent of female respondents occupied a top-level management spot. When a woman cannot find a trajectory to the top that she can clearly identify with, it’s no wonder that well below half of female respondents reported even aspiring to SVP/Partner or C-suite positions. Again, the lack of female representation at the C-suite level in all industries is likely due to a number of factors. But when trying to reach the highest levels of leadership, recognition, and pay is a far greater stretch when no one already holding those positions looks like you or has similar experiences to you. The presence of women in the top spots provides examples of career possibilities for younger females in our industry to emulate. Women seeing other women in our industry with power and prestige is, in itself, a form of mentorship. These upper management roles are the most influential in our business. They are the people making decisions about the nature of our built environment and should more accurately represent the true populace.
Don MacKenzie found personal and professional reward in mentoring talented young women and men. Through his mentorship, he taught us that there is much to love about our field. A career in real estate development can be fulfilling in many ways with hard work, dedication, and passion. Our industry and our communities will suffer if we do not find a way to include and guide more women. It is imperative that we deliver a positive and inspirational message about the possibilities for women in our industry. Young women can then envision their own rewarding career in real estate, where they can realize meaningful influence over the built environment. A lack of mentorship by dedicated leaders who can understand the experiences of women seeking to further their careers is likely one of many factors preventing women from entering our field. Women who can encourage other women to enter our field and dedicate themselves to succeeding into positions of leadership is one of the keys to truly equal representation. My mentor dedicated himself to many mentees, both male and female. I pushed myself through challenging circumstances and have grown to aspire to leadership roles because of my unique mentor’s encouragement. Where would I be today without his mentorship? Where will other women be without ours?
