Open letter to the Boston commercial real estate community - by Cara Nelson

Cara Nelson, CREW Boston

The last few weeks have been tumultuous. A difficult and painful presidential campaign cycle came to an end, with an unexpected result. Interest rates are steadily rising. The holidays (and yet another year-end) are behind us and winter is in full swing. Through it all, there has been a significant amount of discourse regarding the fate of women in our community and in our country. Women are, and historically have been, underrepresented in the commercial real estate industry, generally, and certainly at the highest levels of management in almost every discipline. As a professional with a national commercial real estate practice working with clients and colleagues across the country and as the 2016-2017 president of CREW Boston, this is top of mind for me almost every day.

How many panels have you attended in the past year or two in which all, or almost all, of the panelists were white men? How many commercial real estate industry events have you attended (other than, perhaps, CREW Boston events) where the incredibly large majority of attendees were white men? How many conference rooms have you entered for a negotiation or a closing, only to discover that, once again, there is perhaps one woman in the room? This happens all too often and has come to be practically expected. This HAS to change. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women represented approximately 51.5% of the population in Massachusetts in 2015. We need to do better in the real estate industry. Much better.

Starting the process of change is tough. To gain momentum, we need all of the women in the commercial real estate industry – the few who are at the top, those in their first year, and everyone in between – to work together to lift women up. However, we cannot go at this alone. More than ever, we need the men in the Boston commercial real estate community to work harder than they ever have before to mentor and sponsor women in their firms. We need the men who are leading most of the commercial real estate firms to notice when there are no women in the room, at the table, or on the panel. We need men to make it clear that diversity in their firms – at all levels – and on their deals and in the commercial real estate community as a whole is not just desirable, but necessary. We need our male colleagues to stand up and work with us. This is a call to action.

We can all have an impact; sometimes an impact may feel small. However, if we each think about involving women on a deal team, as a new hire, in a pitch, attending an important client meeting, we CAN move the needle. I am encouraging all of the Boston-area commercial real estate firms to step up and resolve to do better. Notice. Be aware and encourage awareness by others. Do your part to prevent discrimination, whether overt or due to an unconscious bias. Encourage – no, require – diversity on all of your teams – you will be more successful as a result. My hope is that by the time my daughter, and all of our daughters, are grown, we will have made a difference.

Cara Nelson is a partner in the real estate group in DLA Piper’s Boston office and is the 2016-2017 president of CREW Boston.