The Commercial Real Estate Supplier Diversity Alliance or CRESDA is filling a much-needed void in the commercial real estate industry: supplier diversity. While many companies have amplified diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the last year, many companies are finding challenges extending those efforts to third-party suppliers.

Nancy Glick, co-founder and CEO of CRESDA, recognized the problem through her another business, Newmark Associates, which is certified women-owned. "It was through working in this environment that I realized there was a hole in connecting with larger corporations," she tells GlobeSt.com. "The rhetoric was all there, but they weren't extending it to professional services. Through working in that environment, I realized that there were many other smaller commercial real estate agencies across the country that were having similar struggles."

This year, companies have ramped up diversity efforts and many have internal mandates to extend diversity to third-party suppliers. "There has been a shift with larger corporations, and they are now looking to expand their supplier diversity into professional services, such as commercial real estate," says Glick, noting that while attention to this market segment improved, the challenges increasing supplier diversity didn't go away. "It isn't always as easy to implement."