I remember my first CREW Network luncheon. I was in my late 20’s and had been in the commercial real estate field as an economist and development project manager in Florida and a multifamily lender in Boston by that time. I was fairly confident in my ability to speak with other professionals but walking into a swanky Boston hotel conference room with 200 dynamic women was daunting. I had been referred to CREW Boston (NEWIRE as it was called then) by my mentor, boss and friend, Paul Donahue, of Grandbridge Real Estate Capital. He observed that CREW Network was drawing many high-powered women in commercial real estate and thought I would benefit from interacting with them. To this day I am grateful to him for the recommendation and immensely happy to have taken the personal risk to join the organization.
CREW Network is a business network dedicated to advancing women in commercial real estate globally through networking, leadership development and industry research. The organization has 12,000 members worldwide and emphasizes improving the industry as a whole by helping women succeed in it. The Network has over 75 local chapters around the world which act as leadership incubators. I had the great pleasure of participating in the CREW Network Industry Research Committee from 2008 through 2011. During that time I worked with an extraordinary group of women around the country to develop the inaugural groundbreaking study of compensation parity between women and men in the industry. That publication can be found here. Subsequent studies have been performed every five years and the information gathered shows that women are gaining parity over time. In 2009 I became chair of the Committee. We published white papers to help guide women in career search during the Great Recession. The lessons in leadership, public speaking and communication I learned during that time are invaluable and helped my career tremendously. I learned I love to give back and help women starting out in the business as well as make connections to put deals together.
The best lesson learned was to take a risk and directly ask for what you want. In 2010, I was very interested in providing best practices and industry information to all CREW Network members. I pitched the idea to develop webinars featuring prominent commercial real estate professors. The issue was that Zoom had not yet been invented and it was going to take a great deal of coordination to set up the programs and to figure out the technology. We were able to hold eight webinars in one year with outstanding professors like Peter Linneman of Wharton and Doug Abbey, founder of AMB Properties which later merged with ProLogis. Taking the risk resulted in a path for CREW Network to continue using the webinar program we developed and looking back on it, I realize I’ve rarely had more fun in my professional career. We were able to produce a valuable product consumed by CREW Network members and non-members alike. Today, I am President-Elect of CREW Los Angeles and look forward to promoting more cutting edge ways to improve the commercial real estate industry by lifting women to greater heights.