Angela, a multiracial woman who has worked in commercial real estate for nearly two decades, joined a new company this year as a vice president. But soon after starting at the Florida-based firm, she found that she was the only woman on a team of roughly 30 people. Angela, whom Bisnow agreed to give a pseudonym to protect her identity and allow her to talk candidly about her company, remembers the thought that went through her head during the first meeting where she saw the makeup of her team. “I said to myself, ‘Yeah, this isn’t going to work,’” she said. “In my experience, being the only woman … that hasn’t worked well for me. I’ve experienced very tough challenges that I’ve had to navigate in terms of being heard, being respected and being treated as an equal.” These challenges are now facing women and people of color across commercial real estate, an industry long dominated by white men that has sought to increase the diversity of its ranks in the two years since George Floyd’s murder sparked a racial reckoning. While companies have achieved modest improvements in diversity at the C-suite and board levels, and they have launched new initiatives to bring in more diverse employees at the entry level, experts say there is a big missing piece in the industry’s strategy. “There is a falloff in diversity at the middle management range,” said Melina Cordero , a former executive at CBRE who now runs her own consulting firm focused on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. “I’m not sure a lot of firms even realize the extent of the problem.” The 2021 Global Real Estate DEI Survey, conducted by Ferguson Partners in partnership with Urban Land Institute and other industry organizations, shows how diversity varies at different levels of the North American real estate industry. It found that among senior-level professionals — one level below executive management — 84% were white and 71% were male. Midlevel professionals were 70% white and 58% male. Junior-level professionals were more diverse than their bosses: 60% were white and 48% were male. Read the full story here. | 
