Women of Influence: A Mile In Her Shoes

When Pamela Loveless first moved to Reno, NV twenty-two years ago she clearly did not fit in with the local commercial real estate community. The city’s ethic makeup was 2%-to4% African American, quite different from her California roots. That was two strikes against her, Loveless remembered thinking: she was a woman and she was Black. Without further ado, Loveless, now the owner of PKL Homes, a short-term apartment rental operator, set about finding a way in.

The adage is the Reno was an old cowboy town and it still holds onto that image, she says. “I purchased cowboy hats in every color and whatever I wore to a business event I would pair it with a cowboy hat. I took something near and dear to them and made it mine.”

It worked—at least in terms of name recognition and getting her foot in the industry. Receiving complete acceptance, though, was a long uphill slog that required not only imagination but also grit, backbone and determination. There are still days when she feels she has to push back against subtle bias and discrimination.

“It wasn’t just that I was a woman,” she remembers. “I was also Black and later I became disabled. I do believe I had a harder time than a White woman would have had in similar circumstances.”

The CRE Industry Has a Problem

The commercial real estate industry, it is little secret, has a problem with diversity. Women are still a minority in the community and women of color are even less represented. Likewise men of color. Worse, the industry appears to recognize the problem but is only making progress in increments.

“As an African American commercial real estate brokerage executive, I am profoundly exhausted about discussing the lack of diversity in the commercial real estate brokerage industry,” Ernie Jarvis, founder of Jarvis Commercial Real Estate in Washington, DC, pens at the beginning of his newly-released white paper on CRE hiring diversity. “While I am genuinely heartened by the show of corporate support for diversity and inclusion during these tumultuous times, the industry has a long way to go before it authentically reflects the culturally rich and diverse cities and communities in which we operate.”

Stats about race in CRE are dated and often only shed a narrow light on the scope of the problem. Jarvis says the latest statistics he has seen show that African American brokers make up less than 1% in the industry. “In Washington, DC, the fourth largest US market, there are some firms that have zero African Americans. In New York City, I’m told there are only two senior office brokers, one at Colliers and one at Cushman & Wakefield. Nationally, I know of only one African American market leader industry wide.”

Another sliver of insight comes from an article in Urban Land, published by the Urban Land Institute. According to The Diverse Asset Management Project Firm Assessment, which was written by Bella Research Group and the Knight Foundation, researchers determined that only 0.7% of the 889 real estate investment management firms in their dataset were women-owned, and a mere 2% were minority-owned.

Other data show that women and minorities face an unusual struggle to access the capital needed to grow their businesses in all industries, particularly real estate.  For example, African Americans receive only 2% of all SBA loan products.

Then there is a 2019 study by Harvard Business School and Bella Research, which identified only 17 women-owned and 21 minority-owned real estate investment firms among the total universe of 967 firms listed in the Prequin database, less than 5% of the industry. The percentage of real estate assets under management is even lower, with women and minorities representing about 0.8% and 1.2% respectively, of the industry totals.

The reasons for this lag are manifold and oftentimes depend on an individual’s viewpoint. For Yvonne Stafford, head of Stafford Realty Group in New York City who started out in the 1970s as a tenant rep in Harlem, outright discrimination was commonplace. And while progress has been made, it hasn’t entirely gone away, she relates. “Today most Blacks are in residential real estate and there are plenty of Blacks in CRE as well. But it never gets easy,” she says, noting that two years ago a top-tier nationwide CRE brokerage tried to cut her out of a commission. Was it because she was Black? Stafford says she’s not sure and it hardly matters anyway at this point in her storied career: “Commercial real estate is cutthroat. As nice and smiley as everyone is, they will cut your hand off at the wrist given a chance. Being Black is just part of that. You always have to be on guard.”

Stereotypes can be difficult to overcome even among global, cosmopolitan audiences, where the image of a submissive Asian female is alive and well, says Carmela Ma, president of CJM Associates in Los Angeles. Part of her problem may be, the four-foot, 10-inch Ma says, that she is “vertically challenged.” But that has not held back men of similar stature. Ma learned years ago that her best strategy is to, as Teddy Roosevelt once said, speak softly and carry a big stick. Done correctly, it can be like shooting fish in a barrel, Ma adds. “Bullies are easy targets because they are too sure of themselves. When you are under the gun you can’t be afraid to retaliate and use the right techniques.”

We at GlobeSt. Real Estate Forum won’t pretend to have the solution to this complex, age-old issue of bias and discrimination. We can channel, though, suggestions from those in the trenches.

One reason there are so few women of color in commercial real estate is a lack of awareness of it as a viable career, says Tonya Brandon, managing director at CBRE and head of its African American Network Group. “We have to make women of color aware that CRE can be a great career path for them. I didn’t know about it when I was starting out.”

Finding a mentor is also crucial, says Sadhvi Subramanian, a senior vice president in Capital One’s commercial real estate group. “I was lucky enough to have an excellent manager when I was starting out who pushed me pretty hard to get outside of my comfort zone and make sure that I was visible to senior management.”

For those not as lucky, she suggests joining industrial associations, especially such groups as CREW or the diversity organization REAP. “Getting involved in leadership positions in industry organizations like these helped me create my own network. They also gave me some confidence and broadened my knowledge of the industry, getting exposure to deals and information that I didn’t get on the job.”

Are these suggestions enough to push a woman of color past the challenges of racism? Probably not. But they are a tool in an industry where precious few have been made available to minorities and women through the years. Another tool for this cohort are the stories people of color have to share as they advance up the ladder. Here, GlobeSt. Real Estate Forum can be of better help. We’ve spoken with a handful of men and women to find out what their experiences have been, what their advice is for the next generation and what is the future they see unfolding for the industry as awareness continues to grow about the challenges and opportunities in CRE. These stories are instructive, illuminating and ultimately, humbling.

A Second Career Act

PKL Homes, which contracts and holds master leases with apartment complexes and developers to offer corporate rentals for workforce and government housing, is Loveless’ second career act, she says. But one way or another she has focused on housing people. With 20-plus years of experience, she opened the doors to her new company in May of 2017 with high hopes as there was little competition for what she was offering in her market. By May of 2019 she started to expand, focusing on housing traveling executives.

By this point race wasn’t a blatant issue for Loveless, but there were subtle things to remind her that bias still exists. Incidents like, after a successful telephone call with a developer to take over a complex, meeting in person and having him tell her he was no longer comfortable with the arrangement. “I told him that was okay—this probably wasn’t the right fit. I think he was surprised by that, maybe he expected me to bargain or negotiate with him,” she said. After Loveless’ success began to be chronicled in the local news, the developer reached out to her again for a similar deal, she relates.

“It is a process and as business owners we try to convince partners that we are the right fit. I let the relationship guide me as to what to do. In this case, I didn’t think there was much I could do to convince him I was the right person until I proved it with other projects.”

Sometimes Loveless finds that business partners think she will be happy to give up something for free that they wouldn’t ordinarily ask a man or a White woman.  For instance, Loveless took the master lease on several cottages in a business park that were set against a lovely lake. They were so beautiful she decided to rent one for herself. However she had a hard time communicating to another corporate tenant that they could no longer use the land next to her cottage—her backyard essentially—for their own picnics or outdoor lunches. “It took several visits and calls on my part to get them to stay on their own land. I finally told them, ‘how would you feel if I came to your office and ate lunch in your lobby’. Then they finally got it.” But really, she adds, why was it necessary to have this conversation more than once?

Another example:  Loveless also creates the interior design for her units, which she says often is complemented by designers. One tenant told her he wanted to put up pictures of the unit on its website. “I told them ‘no, that is my intellectual property. You can link people to my site if you want to show it off.’ I think they were taken aback by that. That I would be grateful that they were willing to showcase my work.”

It has been a long time since Loveless has experienced overt racism but thoughts of early episodes in her career came to forefront in June after George Floyd’s killing and the subsequent peaceful protests and then, in some cities, riots. “There was a backlash in the community and the message of Black Lives Matter was drowned out,” she says. Her first thoughts were to make sure her tenants were safe and to check on the whereabouts of her adult son. Loveless is unsure how or when the nation can recover from these events. The best she can do is apply what she has learned from a career in commercial real estate—a career that she says she wouldn’t trade in if she could do it all over again. “You always have a choice. You can either feel sorry for yourself or trust in your abilities and find a way to be productive and support your community.”

A Fund of Her Own

Stafford of Stafford Realty Group is heading into a second act of her own. She is currently launching her first commercial real estate fund dedicated to housing health facilities that will address the issue of bias in the medical profession. It is a for-profit community impact fund with a first raise goal of $10 million, Stafford explains. Fundraising for a novice is no easy task, especially for women, which rarely are found in such positions.

But Stafford has had her share of “firsts” before in the CRE industry, having launched her career decades ago in Harlem.

Stafford’s school counselors urged her to become a teacher or a nurse, but she had already caught the real estate bug from her mother who bought houses with her brother and rented them out. “That is what I grew up with,” she remembers.

Stafford got her first job by walking into the office of an owner of a 12-story building in Harlem and asking for a job. “He told me to walk up and down 155th Street and ask tenants about their leases and if they were happy with their buildings. So I did it.”

As she got the hang of it, Stafford became quite aggressive in leasing out stores. Her boss, a member of REBNY, sent her to the organization to represent the company. “I was the only Black person on the board.” That was the makeup of the industry back then, she says. “When I would go to a conference there might have been 100 white men in suits in a room, 10 women if that and one Black person. That was usually me.”

A Black broker working for a Black businessman, Stafford found in her early days that landlords were reluctant to pay the company what was the norm in fees. “We had to train people that we expected our money, that we wouldn’t just accept a partial payment,” she says. Sometimes that wouldn’t work and it would be off to the courthouse for the company to get its rightful due.

Things started to change when big business started to rediscover Harlem and landlords realized there was significant money to be made. “Then they did deals with us without the pushback because we were here and knew the neighborhood,” Stafford says.

But the trips to the courthouse haven’t been completely relegated to memory lane, although Stafford is quick to acknowledge that litigation is part of the commercial real estate landscape no matter what your gender or race. Two years ago, she recently had to sue for her commission when a landlord told her he couldn’t pay it because he lowered the rent to bring on the tenant. Stafford told him no and thought the matter was settled—until she discovered the tenant had leased the place through the landlord. Long story short, she says: “I sued everybody and I won.”

For all the headaches, Stafford loves commercial leasing. “It’s not an easy business and it can be harder because I am female and this world is male dominated and because I am Black. To succeed you have to be smart and tough. You can be nice too—but smart and tough come first.”

Never Make Assumptions

At its heart, CRE is very relational in nature, says CBRE’s Brandon, who was named a Women of Influence in 2017. It is also a white male dominated industry, she says, which means men and women of color have to reach out to be included. “Inclusion is a right not a privilege,” she says. And it also behooves the organization to be inclusive as well. “If we are engaging through creativity and collaboration, business results become so much more dimensional.”

CBRE offers many opportunities for people of color to advance through its ranks including through its African American Network Group, she says.

The network launched in 2004, started by four professionals in the New York area, she says. “It was predominantly concentrated on brokers and sales but it has now grown into 900 professionals. “Our vision really is to advance diversity and inclusion as a  core value that benefits not just CBRE but our clients and community,” Brandon says.

When she began her career, though, her opportunities were usually of her own making. With one company she was the only Black team member for a number of years, becoming leader of the team within six years. “It was not until I was team leader that I was able to make hiring decisions and then the team became ethnically diverse,” she says.

Brandon also has experienced her share of uncomfortable moments such as when she put a lot of hours into preparing for a presentation only to find someone else was making the presentation. “I remember wondering ‘how will that person know how to answer all of the questions that would come up?’ But I was told it would be fine.” Of course, it didn’t turn out to be fine. The presenter, who went on to co-opt the project, eventually hit a roadblock and had to be helped out of the ditch, she says.

In situations like this, it doesn’t pay to hold a grudge, Brandon says. “I never want to make assumptions about a situation. Biases are founded in an assumption and I try not to be that in reverse. I would contend that the intentions or outcomes that Black professionals are looking for are the same as everyone else’s. Perhaps that’s the only assumption I’ll make: We are all working for the same outcome.”

My Own Industry Network

Capital One’s Subramanian counts herself lucky in her experiences. Although she is aware that discrimination is out there, “my experiences have been positive.” At the beginning of her career, she had a manager who pushed her to get out of her comfort zone and make sure she was visible to senior management. She also was able to get involved in leadership positions in industry association, “which helped me create my own network.”

There were many benefits to this, Subramanian adds. It also gave her confidence and broadened her knowledge of the industry, giving her exposure to deals and information that she didn’t have on the job. “It helped me to create a strong network of women which I still rely on heavily—for talking and getting advice and for bouncing ideas off of people.”

It is through her network that Subramanian sees the discrimination women and women of color face. “We all talk about it. It is very present in CRE and in banking in general. We talk about how to handle it.”

Having been raised in India, Subramanian came to the US job market not expecting discrimination. “I had a different perspective, although there may have been things that I didn’t notice.”

Still, she was cognizant of her differences but eventually that translated into a positive for her. “Something changed for me at some point. I know I bring different attributes to the table and I started pursuing that as a strength not a weakness. It was a definite change of attitude for me.”

Her advice to women entering the industry right now: “Start with the basic assumption you are good at what you do. Then figure out how you can build around that.”

A Fight on Two Fronts

CJM Associates’ Ma says she has been fighting discrimination on two fronts her entire professional life: being female and being Asian. Fortunately, she has the tools to handle even the worst of the bullies, she says. “I am involved in a lot of international, cross-border business and you have to be aware not only of race and religion but also culture and social norms in these situations,” she says.

“It requires deep understanding to survive in this world.”

For Ma, her tiny stature makes it easy for people to overlook her but there is more to this oversight than just height. “For women of a different race or color it can be very convenient for people not to notice you or look past you.”

The only solution is to insist that they acknowledge you, Ma says.

She remembers one meeting with a sponsor and her supervisor and not once did the sponsor speak with her or even meet her eyes. “There were only three of us at this meeting. So I said, ‘let me introduce myself again’ to him to make my point. You always have to address things like this.”

Ma found media attention, like with Loveless, to be very helpful. In the early 1990s real estate in Asia was having a particularly tough time. Ma was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and suddenly landlords and owners saw her as an expert on Asian capital and her phone started ringing off the hook, she says.

Market trends have also given her assistance. For instance in recent years Asian buyers have accounted for a significant percentage of US deals. “That was a time when people were eager to work with Asian and if you were female it didn’t matter.”

In ordinary times, though, being female and Asian can seem to be a double burden, she says. “Racists will perceive Asian women as submissive and bullies like to dominate.”

No matter what it takes, she urges, you cannot let them get away with it. “Always reveal or expose what these bullies are. It is the only way to get them to change their ways.”

Her preference is to always stay polite, but if they attack first she ignores etiquette and moves to expose them. She tells of a time she was invited to speak in Singapore. When she arrived, she was treated dismissively, especially when it became clear she would not kowtow. “The planners actually tried to keep me out of the room. My attitude was, ‘I am here to deliver the best speech I can and you are trying to keep me from doing that.’”

“I had to explain to them that what they were doing was wrong and would be a discredit to their audience.”

This might not work for all women, Ma readily says. “We all have our techniques—just don’t use society’s yardstick to fight back—those are designed to favor the establishment. We have to create our own.”

The Problem With Old Guard Developers

When she was starting out on her career, Pharrah Jackson, managing director at Greystone, had aspirations of working in law enforcement, possibly with the FBI. But her mother worked for Fannie Mae and that is how she landed her first few jobs. “My internship was at Fannie Mae and later I worked at DUS shops.” She wound up loving it and was hooked.

If this story sounds familiar that is because it is. Many people of color find their way into commercial real estate because they’ve been introduced to it by family or a trusted friend.

“Minorities look out for one another,” she says. “I have had lots of ‘mothers’ and ‘aunts’ in my career in commercial real estate. We all know each other. I know my Black counterparts at our competition because there are not that many of us.”

But Jackson’s perspective veers from many of her fellow Black female colleges in one respect: she feels that the discrimination she has faced in CRE has been because she is a woman and not because she is a woman of color.

This discrimination is not overt but it still can be very undermining. “For example, I will answer a question at a meeting and the person will look to my boss for confirmation that I am right.” Even after 17 years at Greystone, she says, that still happens today.

Jackson also says that many people are accepting of her expertise and don’t see her as a Black woman. Old guard developers can be an exception, though, she says, and these are the ones most likely to look to her boss for confirmation. “But even that, I feel, is becoming less of a problem. Twenty-years ago I was asked to fetch coffee in a meeting. That hasn’t happened in a long time.”

The way to counter such actions is simple, Jackson says: speak up. “Women don’t do that enough but it is the only real way to effect change.”