BOSTON-Kirk Sykes, president of New Boston Fund's urban strategy America fund, has been appointed chairman of the board of directors for the Real Estate Executive Council. The professional association works to promote the interests of minority executives doing business in the commercial real estate industry.
The REEC Board is made up of 14 members, each of whom serves a maximum of two consecutive three-year terms. Sykes will succeed Quintin Primo III, who served as chairman of the REEC Board since the inception of the organization in 2003. Sykes has been working as vice chairman of REEC for the last three years.
Under Sykes, the association will work to attract a more diverse membership while also working to offer services and support to existing members—including those who helped launch the organization and are now the industry's elder statesmen and women.“One of my goals is for REEC is to be less board centric and more supportive of membership in trying to grow the senior people of color in real estate,” he tells GlobeSt.com.
Another goal is for the group to highlight the performance of people of color who are money managers in real estate and to increase the number of funds and individuals who are managing capital at corporations. Too, the group must pay attention to a changing demographic, Sykes notes.
“The industry doesn't reflect the constituency of who will be in it going forward, or for whom real estate deals will be executed, but we will work to change that. It's people of color, women…it's ethnically diverse."
REEC also will champion the work of its existing members during Sykes' tenure in the top spot, he says. “We've worked to highlight the performance of minority run funds, to say more capital should get allocated to them; not because of a diversity issue but because of the performance of those funds.”
In addition, Sykes wants to ensure that his members are prepared for future trends in the marketplace. “Pre-recession, funds didn't necessarily need a duration. Post-recession, people are more conservative, so we have to change our approach. We have to find ways to help our members adapt to the new, post0-recession world.”
At New Boston's USA Fund, Sykes supervises partnership equity placement, the identification of potential and actual investments and developments, as well as the management of the Fund's day-to-day business operations. He specializes in the creation of urban mixed-use, mixed-income developments.
Sykes is chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and a commissioner on the City of Boston's Civic Design Commission. He serves as co-chair of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Responsible Property Investment Council, is a member of the organization's N.E. Executive Committee, and works with several other industry groups.
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Rayna Katz
Rayna Katz is a seasoned business journalist whose extensive experience includes coverage of the lodging sector, travel and the culinary space. She was most recently content director for a business-to-business publisher, overseeing four publications. While at Meeting News, a travel trade publication, she received a Best Reporting award for a story on meeting cancellations in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
