B+E Talks With Collette English Dixon About DEI

After a long career in real estate investment management, Collette English Dixon, executive director of the Marshall Bennett Institute of Real Estate at Roosevelt University in Chicago, is now focused on developing future talent for industry through higher education.

Being directly engaged in talent development and the talent search process is energizing and rewarding at this stage in her professional journey, English Dixon says in the latest episode of a video interview series Women in Net Lease with B+E’s Camille Renshaw and Katherine Wadleigh-White.

“I feel as though I can really make a difference rather than just kind of helping move it along, and that is exciting. I can be much more direct about the issues and more directly involved in helping to find solutions,” she says.

One of those issues is diversity, or lack thereof in the real estate industry.  

“Some of the things that keep me focused now were on my radar screen throughout most of my career, which is the lack of diversity in this industry and the need to continue to bring new and fresh and excited talent into the room,” she says.

She is also able to champion diversity, equity and inclusion — as well as deploy her deep experience in the industry — as a member of boards, including for Marcus & Millichap Commercial Real Estate Investment Services, where she joined the board of directors in late 2021. “It’s been an interesting experience. It is a public company and one where [the board role] is as much about my real estate experience as it is my experience around talent and diversity and concerns around inclusion so it’s been a nice combination role.”

English Dixon believes strongly in the power of mentors, having come up in the industry without one. “I wish I had had the opportunity to really have industry-based mentors when I started out. I think it would have helped me avoid a few mistakes that fortunately were not career killers,” she says. “Obviously I hung in there for 30 years, but I think I could have done a lot of things better if there had been someone that helped me navigate some of those unspoken rules, and those just quirks of this industry.”

In absence of an industry mentor, she looked closer to home for inspiration. “As a young woman of color in this industry in the Southeast, there weren’t many people who necessarily had a consideration of trying to be a mentor to me so I think if I had to pick a mentor that’s been with me through most of my career and has had the greatest impact on me it would, probably strangely enough, be my mother,” she says. “She helped me get my head wrapped around how to be a woman in the business world.”

Her advice for young women looking to get into commercial real estate is to find their niche based on their individual strengths and passions. “It’s important to figure out where your skill sets and strengths can position you well. Not everybody’s meant to be a broker or an asset manager or a property manager or whatever,” she says. “See your skill sets for what they are, the ones that you know give you energy, the ones that you really thrive on, and find a space in the industry that plays to that where you can use those skill sets and those strengths to position you to be successful. Buy in what feels good and step into it.”