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Chief Diversity Officer Judith Brown Clarke announced a new diversity plan for the Stony Brook University campus community in a campus-wide email on June 24.

The strategic plan follows the request for Clarke to implement the Plan for Equity, Inclusion & Diversity during the University’s statement on the death of George Floyd and the mass protests held across the country against racism and police brutality. 

“We will ‘lift the words off the pages’ of our thoughtfully crafted Plan for Equity, Inclusion & Diversity (DEI),” Clarke said in a June 5 message to the campus community. “We have had strategic implementation plans each year since the development of our DEI plan that have provided relevant and targeted guidance on our emphasis for the year.” 

This year, Clarke plans to focus on the current needs and concerns of students following the Black Lives Matter movement, while still developing plans for the upcoming academic year. 

Clarke found a theoretical strategy for all of the various roles on campus including administrators, students and student leaders using a social change model called Collective Impact. It is a process that involves problem-solving and continuous learning. An in-depth explanation of the model and what it will look like when applied to the campus community will come in the next two weeks. 

The four conditions of collective impact for her plan include authentic community engagement, community aspirations, strategic learning and high leverage activities. 

“As a campus community, we will lead with purpose to build a supportive culture with our shared value strategy embedded into our actions and operational practices,” Clarke said in the email. “Our ability to accomplish this can only happen with the active engagement of all members of the community, which includes undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, faculty, staff, alumni and external stakeholders.”

Clarke also emphasized the importance of activities that have occurred thus far and the upcoming events planned for the campus community, including two more sessions of a virtual town hall presentation by the Center for Changing Systems of Power.

On June 24, a community dialogue on structural and systemic racism and discrimination was held for undergraduate students by the Center for Civic Justice and hosted by more than 12 cultural organizations on campus. 

The dialogue gave Black students and other students of color a space to discuss the recent events and to identify their needs that need to be addressed by Stony Brook University in order to move forward. 

Shaheer Khan, president of the Undergraduate Student Government, said the dialogue was a step in the right direction.

“It was good to see administrators and faculty members listening to us; I’m excited to see what will be done with the information shared by us students,” he said. 

Various faculty and administration joined the discussion to listen to students.

“I believed the dialogue was very helpful in getting students to a virtual table to express themselves in a very authentic and genuine way,” Jarvis Watson, assistant dean of students, said. “I came away from that dialogue appreciating the power that students have when they collectively use their voices for change, with a sense of urgency.”

There was a follow-up conversation on June 29 where future actions and efforts for university leadership were discussed based on the problems students brought up in the community dialogue. 

“The foundation of this Diversity Plan in Action is to ensure that everyone feels seen, heard, included, valued, supported and affirmed,” Clarke said in the June 5 email. “I am committed to developing positive outcomes from this plan and creating meaningful change on our campus.”

Scroll through the websites of major firms and their top executives, and the faces staring back invariably do not include many people of color, nor many women.

“Our industry has a real diversity problem and we all know it,” Tammy K. Jones, co-founder and chief executive of Manhattan-based Basis Investment Group, said over email. Hers is one of the very few black female-controlled real estate investment platforms nationally. “You can even look at the commercial real estate Zoom webinars and virtual conferences during this pandemic and the boxes all look the same; largely, ‘male and pale.’ This visual sadly serves a powerful reminder to me of how little things have changed over the last 20 years.”

All available statistics show a sorry record on diversity compared to other major U.S. industries such as media, insurance, law, and technology. Here’s one: Of the $69 trillion of assets in the global investment market, including in real estate, just 1.3 percent is invested in firms that women or minorities run, according to a 2019 report from the Bella Research Group and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The industry’s efforts to date have focused largely on recruiting and education. Now, in the wake of protests following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police, some see an opportunity to accelerate changes already underway in the industry. And they say they have demography and technology on their side.

“That’s why the industry has been slow to change,” said Diane Danielson, chief operating officer of commercial real estate franchisor and consultancy SVN International. “There are still people out there doing business the same exact way they did in the 1980s and 1990s.”

Commercial real estate has always intersected with issues of race and socioeconomic class, including where to build and for whom—as well as who to partner with and what to charge for the finished product. And it’s facing increasing pressure within New York City to fortify those intersections. Witness how alarmed and surprised the industry was by the passage of new rent regulations last year in New York — which many low- and middle-income New Yorkers and their elected officials heartily supported.

But that’s just the management side. On the employee side, the impact runs deeper.

Minority and female employees suffer from a dearth of the sort of connections that prevent them from advancing in an industry that runs on “who do you know?”

In the end, what finally moves commercial real estate towards meaningful diversification might not be any sort of higher calling to end such disparities, or to even improve its public image. It might just come down to being better for the bottom line.

‘Country club recruiting’

The last big data dump regarding diversity in commercial real estate came out seven years ago, and painted a very monochromatic picture. Interviews and responses to requests for more recent data suggest that things have diversified slightly, but that a lot remains the same.

A 2013 report that analyzed Census and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data covering a broad swath of the industry nationwide — including property managers, developers, and appraisers, while excluding brokers — found that 77.6 percent of senior executives in commercial real estate were white men, and 14.1 percent were white women (a 2017 report from CREW Network, an advocacy group, found the industry overall to be nearly two-third male). Hispanic men accounted for 2.9 percent of such roles, and Asian men 1.6 percent. Black men held 1.3 percent. Non-white women barely registered.

The report found similarly chasmic discrepancies in the middle-management and professional ranks of commercial real estate. These stats compare with a country that is 60 percent white, 18 percent Hispanic, 13 percent Black, and 6 percent Asian, according to census data.

The reasons for these discrepancies, and for their staying power, run the gamut.

There’s nepotism, to begin with. Many major real estate firms, especially in New York and other larger markets, are family businesses where prime leadership roles are passed down from generation to generation. Beyond that, family connections tend to ease entry into the industry. In one recent CO list of 25 promising entrants in the market, a dozen of the honorees spoke of having family in the business. And, as CO reported, it’s not unusual for applicants to be asked if they have such familial ties—or just the dreaded “who do you know” question. If they can’t rattle off names, or some personal connections, they may not get in the door. SVN International, for its part, has labeled this approach “country club recruiting”.

“It’s all relationship-based,” Kirk Sykes, managing partner of Boston-based Accordia Partners and a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, who’s black, said. “People hire who they know, who they like. It’s just not a very democratic access to entry.”

Going further back, the problems also start with the historical marginalization of people of color in particular through segregation and redlining. All too often one of the best ways to break into commercial real estate, particularly from well outside the field, is some sort of advanced educational training, which often includes introductions to industry players.

That’s not always an option for people of color given those historical disadvantages. “You could get a master’s in real estate to get hired,” Sykes said. “Not everyone can afford a master’s though.”

Beyond the historical barriers — which the industry in recent years has tried to knock down through internship and mentoring programs — is the way business has long been done in commercial real estate. Even after getting a foot in the door, dealmaking and investment are based extensively on personal connections forged in higher education and in institutions traditionally not open to minorities.

“Commercial real estate is a relationship business and it’s hard to navigate if you are on the outside without sponsorship or access to opportunity,” Basis Investment’s Jones said.

Reams of research in recent years suggest that diversification would do the industry good, however, especially given the looming demographic shift.

A landmark 2015 report from consultancy McKinsey & Company that analyzed 366 firms in several countries, including the U.S., found a correlation between a company’s diversity and its profitability. Among the starkest findings was that companies in the top quartile of racial and ethnic diversity were 35 percent more likely to reel in financial returns above their respective national industry medians. A 2018 update to the McKinsey report, with 1,000 companies analyzed this time, reached similar conclusions.

It’s the same for hiring the best talent in the next generation. Diversity’s key there too. An SVN International study, out in 2016, polled millennials regarding the commercial real estate industry specifically. That survey found that the largest generation yet in America put a premium on diversity. Around 45 percent rated gender diversity at commercial real estate firms very or extremely important, and more than 41 percent saw ethnic diversity in the same way.

What’s more, being diverse to begin with can help attract millennial talent, the SVN study found. That’s because “a lack of diversity can be a dealbreaker for the diverse talent the industry needs.”

Death and dinosaurs

The industry needs talent because it’s aging. The median age for commercial real estate brokers who belong to the National Association of Realtors was 60, according to the results of a survey that the group released in 2017. For comparison, the funeral industry, with a median age of 53.1, was the oldest industry tracked by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics that year, per SVN International.

This agedness in commercial real estate isn’t necessarily just because the nation as a whole is graying — an estimated 10,000 people in the U.S. were turning 65 every day by 2019, according to census data—but instead is due to different factors that in turn contribute to the industry’s lack of diversity.

The last two recessions, before the current one, hit first just as members of Generation X were finishing college and starting their careers and then as the millennials were doing the same. These recessions in 2000-2001 and 2007-2009 stymied hiring and pushed back shifts in leadership roles at commercial real estate firms that much further, analysts say.

Then there are the “dinosaur firms” (another SVN term). These are the decades-old — sometimes a century-plus-old — companies that dominate commercial real estate, particularly in its more lucrative markets such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. They’re a turnoff for younger entrants because of their reliance on doing business largely through those previously forged connections and because of a resistance to potentially disruptive technology.

And there is commercial real estate’s reliance on commission-based pay, particularly for brokers. Younger would-be entrants can’t afford to work for lengthy periods of time before they get paid. Some analysts have suggested switching to a team commission model or to something that provides more money upfront to cover the training costs that might go into even applying for a job in the first place.

Finally, real estate licensing boards tend to emphasize the residential side of the business and not the commercial side; and the classes for residential licenses versus commercial ones abound as a result. “The classes are all residential,” Danielson said. “You have to know that you want to be in commercial real estate to get into it.”

Trillions in opportunity

Basis Investment’s Jones sees potential in the demographic shifts, especially when it comes to her investing wheelhouse. Of the approximately $15 trillion in commercial real estate in the U.S., she said, about half is located in the middle market, and is usually owned by individuals or partnerships—and a majority of these owners “are baby boomers who are beginning to age out.”

That could lead to a big transfer of that ownership, and it’s one of the reasons Jones said she and others are working to diversify the industry ahead of time. Proptech might speed that and other transfers, erasing the classic barriers in commercial real estate by more easily connecting buyers and sellers, investors and entrepreneurs. Sykes said it’s especially exciting because much of this technology, including crowdfunding facilitators and listing aggregators, is just getting started.

“I think there is a whole maturation in that industry that has yet to happen,” he said.

On the brokerage side, numerous internship and mentorship programs have arisen since that 2013 study laying bare the industry’s stark homogeneity. The Real Estate Executive Council, a professional trade association for executives of color in commercial real estate, runs internships for minority high schoolers. That program is closing in on 400 interns so far, with 1,500 slated for the next four years. The Real Estate Board of New York launched its own minority and women internship program in 2019, placing 51 young adults in paid summer stints.

The idea behind these efforts is to reach people before or at the very start of their careers so they can establish a track record and not rely on personal connections to land a job. “The kids that we see that really want to do real estate have demonstrated that they do and tend to stand out,” an executive at Starwood Property Trust told CO in 2019 regarding hiring at alternative lending firms.

Such programs and the new technology, as well as those demographic movements and a renewed focus on the issue, might finally diversify commercial real estate after years of awareness of the challenge. Much as the pandemic sped along changes in the physical layout of commercial real estate, the current social unrest might accelerate changes to the physical makeup of the people occupying it.

“There are new ways and new avenues for people to come into real estate,” Danielson said. “Not as many as there should be, but it’s happening.”

Amid ongoing race-equality protests and growing awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement, Restaurant Brands International Inc., parent to the Burger King, Tim Hortons and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen brands, is committing to diversity in corporate hiring, the company said Monday.

The Toronto-based RBI said it had made inroads in gender equality and sexual-orientation diversity, but in a coronavirus business update said it was setting goals in race equality in its corporate hiring.

“Despite some areas of progress in becoming more diverse as an organization, we have reflected on our insufficient racial diversity at RBI,” said José Cil, RBI CEO, in a business update.

“A week and a half ago, we stopped and joined together as a team to learn more about ways we could all serve as catalysts for change through ally-ship and advocacy,” Cil wrote. “While our charitable foundations do important work with African-American and Black communities in the U.S. and Canada, I will not diminish the fact that we do not have enough racially diverse voices and perspectives in our company and we’re going to change that.”

Cil said the company is committing “to ensure at least half of all final-round candidates interviewing for roles with our four RBI offices will be from groups that are demonstrably diverse, including race.”

Cil added, “I am taking on this commitment along with our leadership team to ensure that this becomes a permanent diversity shift that permeates every corner of RBI.”

Cil, who has led RBI for the past year and a half, said the coronavirus pandemic had led the company to evaluate many aspects of its business.

The decline in sales that began in March with state and city restrictions on dining rooms led to improvements in home-delivery channels, mobile order and pay and drive-thru, Cil said.

“Our teams have rewritten code for our apps; reimagined service opportunities like curbside pickup; and expanded delivery services into thousands of new restaurants,” he said. “The outcome has been a significant increase in digital sales in North America, and we believe this trend shift to digital is what guests will continue to demand.” 

On Monday, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, along with three provincial counterparts, said it was investigating Tim Hortons’ mobile-ordering app after media reports raised concerns about how it may be collecting and using data about users’ movements.

“The OPC will examine whether Tim Hortons is in compliance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), Canada’s federal private sector privacy law,” the office said in a statement. The office will look at whether the company is obtaining consent from app users to collect and use geolocation data, which could include the amassing and use of detailed user profiles.

In the RBI business update Monday, the company said that asof last week nearly all Burger King restaurants were open in North America and same-store sales were trending flat to last year. “This is driven by strong performance in drive-thru,” Cil noted, “given most of our dining rooms throughout North America remain closed or offer reduced seating.”

About 90% of the company’s Tim Hortons in Canada were open, with most of the remaining restaurants located in malls, food courts, sporting complexes and other public facilities that remained closed. Same-store sales were in the negative high teens last week, Cil said, improved from the negative mid-40s in mid-March.

Same-store sales growth at Popeyes, which remained strong through the pandemic lockdowns, remained in the high 20s last week.

“Nearly all Popeyes restaurants in our home market are open for takeout and delivery – with dining rooms mostly closed. In mid-June, the team also brought our Chicken Sandwich to Canada in a test market where we have seen really strong demand, giving us optimism that the quality of our sandwich will transcend markets and continue to attract new guests to our brand,” Cil said.

In Asia-Pacific, more than 90% of the restaurants were open. In Europe, Middle East and Africa, more than 80% restaurants were open. In Latin America, about 60% of restaurants were open.

RBI at the beginning of the COVID-19 orders in March drew down on its revolving credit facility. “Given the steady improvements we’ve seen in our business and our strong financial position, we are repaying all outstanding amounts under our revolver this week,” Cil said.

Cil said the company also was focusing on long-term investments such as its sustainability initiatives, outlined under its “Restaurant Brands for Good” banner.

Part of that initiative include a Burger King Whopper without colors, flavors and preservatives from artificial sources, he said.

Over the last 100 days of the coronavirus pandemic, Cil said, RBI has added voices to its crisis discussions.

“We have been able to move quickly and decisively while also including far more perspectives in the decision making,” he said, “But we still have substantial work to do to add more diversity to those voices.”

For the first quarter ended March 31, RBI posted net income of $224 million, or 48 cents a share, compared to $246 million, or 53 cents a share, in the same period last year. Revenues were down 3.2% to $1.22 billion from $1.27 billion in the prior-year quarter.

As of March 31, Restaurant Brands International had more than 27,000 restaurants in over 100 countries, including 18,848 Burger Kings, 3,336 Popeyes and 4,925 Tim Hortons.

Anthony Mackie is calling on Marvel to improve diversity within its ranks. In a Variety Actors on Actors interview with Daveed Diggs, Mackie, star of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, lamented that he’s appeared in multiple Marvel films where everyone behind the scenes is white. The one notable exception? “When you do Black Panther, you have a Black director, Black producer, a Black costume designer, a Black stunt choreographer,” said the MCU’s Falcon. “That’s more racist than anything else.”

Diggs and Mackie’s discussion was incredibly wide-ranging, but it didn’t take long for their attention to shift to the Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the globe. “What are the ways that you find yourself interacting with the moment?” asked Diggs. “I find a lot of my interactions are just trying to make things better in the gigs I have in front of me — how can I affect different kinds of representation?”

Mackie was quick to indict Marvel for lack of diversity in front of and behind the camera. “When The Falcon and the Winter Soldier comes out, I’m the lead. When Snowpiercer came out, you’re the lead,” he told Diggs. “We have the power and the ability to ask those questions.”

“It really bothered me that I’ve done seven Marvel movies where every producer, every director, every stunt person, every costume designer, every PA, every single person has been white,” continued Mackie. While he appreciated Marvel hiring a Black producer, Nate Moore, for Black Panther, the decision to recruit an entirely Black crew for the film didn’t sit well with him. “If you only can hire the Black people for the Black movie, are you saying they’re not good enough when you have a mostly white cast?” asked the actor.

“My big push with Marvel is hire the best person for the job,” concluded Mackie. “Even if it means we’re going to get the best two women, we’re going to get the best two men. Fine. I’m cool with those numbers for the next 10 years. Because it starts to build a new generation of people who can put something on their résumé to get them other jobs. If we’ve got to divvy out as a percentage, divvy it out. And that’s something as leading men that we can go in and push for.”

Read Anthony Mackie and Daveed Diggs’ entire Actors on Actors interview on Variety.

This week, our Association held a diversity and inclusion discussion, via Zoom, with a wide range of NALP members, volunteer leaders, staff, and stakeholders. Due to space limitations, we weren’t able to invite all NALP members. However, we expect this to be the beginning of an industry-wide discussion about how we can be proactive about encouraging and supporting greater diversity in our leadership, association membership, and the industry as a whole.

During the discussion, the group touched on ways to reach out to new minority industry groups; tell the stories of diverse industry professionals; develop strategies to welcome new people into leadership roles in NALP; and help companies create pathways for advancement for minority employees.

NALP groups, including the Women in Landscape Network, the Young Professionals and African Americans in Landscape groups, and the National Hispanic Landscape Alliance, are catalysts to help the industry create working environments that attract and retain professionals of all races and genders.

NALP exists to serve its membership and advance the industry. We excel when we have substantial input and participation from members, as we’ve had recently on the critical issue of increasing diversity within NALP. We look forward in the weeks and months ahead to working as a group to make change happen!

What do great leaders do? That’s a critically important question for this moment in time, as we see the social unrest that has knocked COVID-19 news stories off the front pages.

It’s a significant moment. As I made clear in a recent message to IREM’s membership, our traditions are rooted in diversity and inclusion, and the depth and breadth of our members’ knowledge forms the backbone of our professional network.

A broad scope of diversity in culture, race, generation, and faith creates an industry that’s rich in experience and knowledge. That same richness can, and should, be applied at the company level. As McKinsey & Co. reported: “Companies in the top quartile for gender or racial and ethnic diversity are more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians. Companies in the bottom quartile in these dimensions are statistically less likely to achieve above-average returns. And diversity is probably a competitive differentiator that shifts market share toward more diverse companies over time.”

Nevertheless, challenges in achieving that diversity persist. On one hand, roughly 98 percent of large companies have some sort of diversity and inclusion program, according to the Harvard Business Review. But it seems these programs sit on a shelf collecting dust, and “around three quarters of employees in underrepresented groups—women, minorities, and LGBTQ employees—do not feel they’ve personally benefited from their companies’ diversity and inclusion programs.”

To underscore that point, Jasmyn Sylvester, CPM, ACoM, and 2020 Chair of IREM’s Diversity Advisory Board, shares her own workplace experiences. She relates that she’s found herself in companies as the only woman of color, as well as the pressures that were put upon her to perform and fit in. As HBR points out, this is not an uncommon issue, and, she says, it starts at the top.

But, in addition to the performance scrutiny, managing with empathy and being supportive of all employees is crucial to the success of your business, and your team. “Even if I wasn’t a woman of color, empathy is something all leaders should have, whether they have experienced bias or not. The ability to listen and empathize with your employees and support them is very important.”

Success—the success both she and McKinsey point to—comes in a variety of packages. First, diversity and inclusion can broaden a management firm’s strategic approach to the market.

“When you have a group of like-minded individuals, no one is going to shake the table,” says Sylvester. “On the other hand, when you have an eclectic and diverse group, you’re bringing a variety of backgrounds and thought leaders to the conversation, and that enhances innovation and productivity.” It also establishes a forward-looking reputation for your firm, one that attracts the best across a pool of diverse talent.

Armed with a multicultural environment, your firm is positioned to provide a broader basis of outreach and a greater comfort level for tenants. Without that cultural foundation, it may be more of a challenge to build connections with an occupancy that doesn’t necessarily share many commonalities.

Bridge that gap, and you’re simultaneously addressing your local market position. “Reputation is everything,” says Sylvester. “If your employees are fully engaged and productive because of the company culture, you’re setting yourself apart from the competition as well.”

Maintaining diversity is the right thing to do, and good for the bottom line.

So, let’s return to the question we began with. True leaders build diverse and inclusive cultures, which contribute to a broad-based and strategic business model for the benefit of all stakeholders. True leaders deliver the best results by capturing the best in everyone.

In addition to her role as 2020 IREM president, Cheryl Gray serves as the head of special projects and operational excellence at QuadReal Property Group in Toronto. She’s IREM’s first international president.