This is Part 2 of a series. Part 1 dove into the retention crisis among women in the early and middle stages of their CRE careers and how mounting frustration could make that worse, stopping the industry's small steps toward gender parity in their tracks. When Melina Cordero was first introduced to concepts like “the broken rung” and “the glass cliff,” they were both unfamiliar and revelatory. It came as a shock for the Washington, D.C.-based former CBRE retail capital markets head to realize that she had experienced both phenomena, as well as other common systemic hurdles, throughout her professional life. Now, as founder of inclusive workplace consultancy P20, Cordero spends her days helping companies develop strong diversity, equity and inclusion programs and policies, often educating them on the same terms that opened her eyes years ago and watching others jolt into awareness. “The sense of relief that you see on a woman's face when she has been struggling with this for years, she thinks it's her fault, and you tell her, ‘Oh, no, this is a structural or systemic issue,’ is mind-blowing. Mind-blowing,” Cordero said. Her firsthand experiences highlight that many women struggle to articulate the structural barriers holding them back in the workplace. They also underline how challenging the conversation necessary to fix them can be as CRE grapples with a crisis-level retention problem, especially among women in its lower and middle… Read Full Story | 
