Growing Mentorship Programs Are Knocking Down Walls For Women In Chicago CRE

When Erin Spears was 10 years old, her dad took her to his work site, handed her a sledgehammer and told her to knock down a wall. 

She said she looked at him like he was crazy, but he told her she was strong and smart enough to figure it out. She did.

Spears, now president of multifamily development firm Fifield Cos., is trying to impart that same lesson to the women climbing the ranks in commercial real estate, offering up mentorship to break down barriers for women in a traditionally male-dominated industry.

“That muscle is in us,” Spears said at Bisnow’s Chicago Women Leading Real Estate event Thursday at the Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel. “That courage, that bravery to put yourself out there and be vulnerable, to ask for help — the more you utilize that muscle, the longer you knock down that wall, the more you use that sledgehammer, the stronger that muscle gets.”

Speakers at the event, which honored 22 rising female stars in Chicago CRE, stressed the importance of formal and informal mentorship in driving success for women in the industry. 

Mentorship can be hard to come by for women in the business world. Sixty-three percent of women have never had a formal mentor, according to a DDI survey of more than 300 businesswomen. Just over half of the organizations represented in the study had a formal mentorship program. 

But some businesses, like LaSalle Investment Management, are beginning to fill the gap and establish those programs.

LaSalle Senior Vice President Amanda Hassan said the company is on its second cohort of a recently established mentorship program that gives participants access to other people at the company they don’t have normal business relationships with. About 50% of the participants in the first cohort said they wanted to continue working together following the conclusion of the program, she said. 

“The most surprising thing is we have more mentors than we have mentees,” Hassan said. “There are so many senior leaders that are willing to give their time and would love to have access and a relationship with some of the younger women rising through the ranks at the company.”

HOK Director of Strategic Relationships Kimberly Dowdell said the firm moved away from manually pairing mentors with mentees a few years ago and now uses an app to create matches. The technology allows participants to input preferences to find the right partnership and allows the company to keep better track of the program, she said. 

“Try to be intentional, try to be organized about the process, especially if you're with a larger organization,” Dowdell said. 

The challenge that comes with pairing people together with an app, just like with dating apps, is that sometimes the algorithm sets people up who aren’t a good fit for each other, Avison Young principal and Managing Director Damla Gerhart said. If that happens, both members of the pair need to recognize it and move on. 

Finding a new pairing could be more helpful for the mentor and mentee to get what they are looking for out of the relationship, Gerhart said. 

“Trying to force yourself to slog through a weird mentor-mentee connection is really tough,” she said. “When people have that experience, they're less likely to want to do it again.” 

While formal programs can be effective, the most powerful mentor-mentee relationships are developed organically, Spears said. Prospective mentees can start the process by asking for detailed feedback on specific areas of their work following a project with someone they admire or trust, she said. 

Those questions can open up conversations that lead to natural bonds, Spears added. 

“You never know what kind of opportunities are going to be out there for you if you don't just take the plunge and say, ‘I'm here,’” Spears said.