PHILADELPHIA, PA—Kristina Harshany, the 2015 president of Commercial Real Estate Women's Philadelphia chapter, came to the industry through a less traditional path than many of , working to advise clients of Citibank, and later, high-net-worth investors, about Section 1031 real estate exchanges. It was when she relocated from Florida to Philadelphia that she realized she needed to connect with other women in the industry.

“I didn't know anyone here, I had transferred up from Orlando and had a limited network here,” Harshany told GlobeSt.com in an exclusive interview. “It's really hard to break into established networks, and it's still incredibly hard to be a woman in commercial real estate and break into male networks.”

Networking opportunities for women are also lacking in the financial sector, which overlaps with commercial real estate in Harshany's daily work as director of private wealth management for SEI, an investment company, she says.

“It's just as limited as it is in commercial real estate,” she says. The national CREW organization produced a benchmark survey in 2010 indicating that about 43 percent of CRE professionals are female.

“That leaves us with a lack of role models,” Harshany says. “There will continue to be more men in the industry until women start to see themselves as possible role models within the industry.”

Networking is essential to success in commercial real estate, she says. “It's always been about who you know and whom you've traditionally done deals with, with a handshake on the side before the deals actually happen. It was very difficult for women to break into those conversations, and CREW allows us to do that.”

CREW is developing a leadership certificate training program with MIT to help women gain credibility and experience that will position them for senior positions in the industry, Harshany says.

“We enable new women to the industry to meet the women who are already doing deals, we enable the women who have been doing it for a very long time to learn about deals before they go to the table,” she says. “We build our network long before there is actual work to be done so when the work needs to be done, we already know who the best are.”

The Philadelphia CRE market is “still interesting,” Harshany says. Development of a second Comcast office tower is underway, and the Cira Centre office complex near Amtrak's 30^th Street Station is expanding.

“I think we have a great market and we're still a great place to be as far as cities,” she says. “I'm still very hopeful that there is more opportunity here. A lot of the folks in the chapter have been really busy so we know that there is a lot of legal work being done on deals, we know that there's a lot of fit-out construction.”

You can hear the complete conversation with Kristina Harshany in the audio player below.