BOSTON—Much like Billy Beane of the Oakland As, Karim Fadel is taking a clear market weakness and turning it into surprising strength. In an industry that has only a toe-hold in diversity, the founder and principal of locally based Unison Realty Partners here is building bench strength by eschewing what he calls a last-century, white-hair mentality.

In the five years since its inception, the investment management firm specializing in grocery-anchored shopping centers has built a $77-million portfolio—90% leased, by the way—with a small, young staff of six, half of whom are women. He saw talent and "enticed them" (to use his wording), with a package of benefits that is rare in the industry. Benefits such as the ability to work wherever and whenever they want, paid maternity and paternity leave and a work environment free of personal judgment. Clearly this isn't your old man's real estate company.

Unison is among a small cadre of commercial real estate companies leading the charge of diversity, as recent stories in both GlobeSt.com and sister publication Real Estate Forum prove. The approach is especially rare among firms the size of Unison.

"Only 14% of the Urban Land Institute's CEO members are women," he says. "Of those, 93% lead firms of less than 100 employees. Plus, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports that, of a total of 13,773 senior real estate executives, 2.9% are Hispanic men, 1.6% are Asian men and 1.3% are African-American men, according to the Wall Street Journal.

"The lack of participation in the real estate industry—especially by women and millennials—is a market inefficiency," he continues. "And taking advantage of that inefficiency for companies like ours can turn this weakness into a competitive advantage." He adds that, when he founded Unison, it was not his intent to focus on diversity "just for diversity's sake.

"But reflecting back, I realized most of my executives were women and younger people—much younger than the industry average," he says. "It turned out that way because I offered things that they wanted and valued, such as the different policies we talked about. This was how I was able to attract talent without the brand name or muscle of larger institutions."

Also contributing to the diversity of the Unison culture is the fact that Fadel is gay and, like many other minorities, he felt out of place in the Old Boys Club. So while he hired for talent, a happy accident of the Unison culture became "an openness and appreciation of peoples' differences and their needs.

"I hired outcasts like me," he says frankly. "The women who work here are all talented, ambitious women who were frustrated in their previous jobs by the lack of opportunities in the real estate world and the lack of understanding concerning the right life-work balance for moms. As a gay dad who shares child-rearing responsibilities equally with his partner, I am better positioned to understand the needs of women in this arena."

The young people in his charge are equally talented, but again, dissatisfied he says with the lack of trust and opportunity. A welcoming, non-judgmental culture, "plays well with a younger generation that's more attuned to these issues." Especially those younger folk who "aren't given the responsibility they should have or do have in other industries such as technology. There's this white-hair mentality that prevents women and millennials from reaching their full potential."

It's important to remain focused on the fact that the culture of Unison is just not the natural outcropping of being "nice," as Fadel says. These are talented people, as the numbers attest, and giving them a home pays dividends.

"It's at the core of my growth strategy," he says. "There's a lot of research pointing to the fact that diversity in the workplace is correlated to economic success of a company. This is something that I witness every day in my company."

You'll notice that when he refers to his coworkers, he refers to women, even though we'd hoped for a more culturally diverse population at Unison. Well, so would Fadel, who chalks the company profile up to market demographics. "We'd certainly welcome more diversity at our Boston office," he says. "And we're hiring!"

But it always comes back to the bottom line. "Welcoming diverse voices and varying points of view makes for a better discussion, better decision making and, ultimately better investments." And apparently, the bottom line proves it.