CHICAGO—Last Friday morning, more than 130 women from all sectors of the commercial real estate business filled a large meeting room at the Four Seasons Hotel and took advantage of an opportunity rare in the male-dominated industry: the chance to network with other women. Lively talk filled the room as attendees made new friendships and connections.

GE Capital Real Estate hosted the morning event, which included an earlier session on building a personal and professional brand, and later an interview by Debbie Riley, the company's capital markets leader, of Lori Healey, the current chief executive officer of Tur Partners and former chief of staff to Mayor Richard M. Daley.

“We recently had an event like this in Tokyo,” Kristy Heuberger, Midwest region manager and one of the hosts, told GlobeSt.com. “We thought it was a huge success and wanted to recreate that in Chicago, and it's been double the energy and double the numbers. We have women from 70 companies out here who work in all different functions.”

“We're trying to build a community,” said Riley, and this Chicago meeting is just the first of these events that GE Capital Real Estate wants to hold in the US. Although she and other participants pointed out that scores of women have already ascended to the top ranks at many real estate companies, especially GE, where women hold six of the eleven global leadership positions, they also want to extend that opportunity to others and create spaces where women can forge new relationships.

GE Capital Real Estate has already worked hard to create those spaces within the company. The firm has about 3,500 employees in the Chicago area, more than half of them women. And Heuberger said she has been a part of a program for women in sales and what the experience has given her is a peer group that she can now call on to explore questions about the business and her career. “It made GE, which is a very big company, feel small.”

However, although such peer groups may help make the real estate world more manageable, they can also expand participants' horizons. Referring to the ongoing networking session, Heuberger said, “you're meeting in a small group, but it's across 70 companies, so it's broadened your reach across the industry.”

Riley said one of the themes of the morning was “that women need to take more risks; women tend to limit themselves.” She wants to see women seize opportunities outside their comfort zone, perhaps moving into sectors of the business that they had not previously considered.

Nancy Abbott, the company's global human resources leader, said many women have jobs in the industry that pay six-figure salaries and have good prospects, but might, for example, hesitate when offered a sales position that would make them dependent on commissions. She wants them to ask, “Do I have the self-confidence to take on that job and succeed? Do other people see me as a leader?”

Abbott also wants to make sure that this and other women's events held by GE Capital Real Estate are a bit more challenging than other networking events. “There are a thousand articles giving career advice, but do you take that advice and put it into play?”