Nancy A. Ruhling is a contributor toReal Estate New York, from which this article is excerpted.
Put yourself to the test: Right off the top of your head, list all the women and minorities involved in the commercial real estate industry who have as much claim to fame as the Donald.If you can’t get beyond Leona “the Queen of Mean” Helmsley, that’s because the few female-owned and minority-owned firms, despite corporate and government diversity initiatives, still aren’t members of the profession’s good-old-boys club and haven’t managed to crack the ever-rising glass ceiling.
“It’s still not easy for a woman,” says Jodi Pulice, founder and president of the decade-old JRT Realty Group Inc. “Being in real estate for more than 24 years now, I still feel like the minority in a male-dominated field. The difference between then and now is that supplier diversity has gained greater acceptance and minority- and women-owned businesses have achieved greater credibility due to a rigorous certification process. As a result, corporate supplier diversity is making greater strides.”
According to executive coach Lois P. Frankel, author of Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich: 75 Avoidable Mistakes Women Make with Money and Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers, Pulice’s wait for a peer may be a long one. “Commercial real estate and construction are male-dominated, paternalistic industries,” she says. “And they’re not the first professions women think of going into when they are choosing a career. Look at the role models–I think of Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley–they are not people most women want to emulate.”
While women dominate the residential real estate market, the commercial sector intimidates them because of its potential to bring wealth and power, Frankel says. “In commercial real estate, there are big numbers,” she says. “Until women are comfortable with the idea that rich is OK and realize that ‘rich’ does not have to rhyme with ‘bitch,’ they will not be successful.”
Women will get their due, says Laura Pomerantz, a principal of PBS Realty Advisors, only when the profession realizes that they can make real and different contributions than men. “Women sometimes are better negotiators because they are listeners,” she says. “Women build relationships, and there’s repeat business when they build relationships.”
Although women like Pulice have made great strides–it is rare for women in the commercial real estate or even the construction industry to face the open hostility or public put-downs that were common through the 1980s–the hurdles they face are covert, which makes them even harder to jump over. Jane Smith, the managing principal of SpaceSmith, a Manhattan-based interior design and architecture firm, finds it frustrating when she makes the short list but loses out to a male-owned firm. “I ask why I didn’t get the job, and the clients say, ‘It’s chemistry.’ They never say it’s because I’m a woman.”
Sometimes, being a woman-owned firm can be used to advantage. “People want to meet you because you are a woman,” says Michele Medaglia, president and CEO of ACC Construction. “It’s a novelty.”
Many women-owned and minority-owned businesses have come into their own because of governmental and corporate diversity programs. In New York State, the goal for women-owned business enterprises is 5% in publicly funded projects and 10% to 15% for minority-owned business enterprises. In addition, major corporations have diversity programs.
“For the past 26 years, women in the construction industry have become very good at what they are doing,” says Lenore Janis, president of Professional Women in Construction, an advocacy and support organization founded in 1980 that reaches 10,000 in the industry. “They are not dependent on the government programs any more. We have women now who have been in the business for 10 to 15 years; the government part was a foot in the door, and it still gives a step up.” ,p>While Maria Molina, owner of Nova Consulting, whose civil and environmental engineering consulting company has offices in Floral Park, NJ, New York and Miami, never has faced that problem, she did find herself the odd man out for another reason. “In Miami, which is a predominantly Hispanic city, the power in the Hispanic side is Cuban. I’m from Colombia, so I’m an outsider,” she says. “There are more opportunities in the Hispanic market in New York than there are in Miami. We operate in Miami as a woman-owned firm because it’s more difficult to compete with the minority-owned group. In New York, the Hispanic population is large, but there are few Hispanic engineering firms.”
Prudential Douglas Elliman executive vice president Toni Haber says that just because there are no barriers to women in residential real estate doesn’t mean that women don’t have to come up with different strategies than men. That’s why she recently formed the Power Women’s Lunch Club, whose members are in real estate, publishing, nonprofit, fashion and entertainment. “We got everyone who is at the top of her game and who is running teams or organizations or departments,” she says, adding that the group’s six lunchers aren’t seeking new members. “We are all women, and we all struggle with the same things–the hiring, the firing, getting the best people, how to keep the team motivated and how to keep the systems going.”
Regardless of which real estate field women and minorities choose, they all agree that having a well-versed mentor–often a man–can make the difference between success and failure.
After 18 years in the fashion world, Pomerantz decided to change careers, and her decision was eased by a couple of men, including Mort Schrader, a principal at PBS. “He was the first to call me,” she says. “He had made the same transition from fashion and was generous about mentoring.”
Smith says she got off on the right foot when her first boss, a woman, “taught me how to present myself in a way that was strong. Mentorship is a key component to success, and young women need to have this.”
Medaglia had a built-in mentor–her father. “If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be so lucky to be in this business,” she says. “He taught me a tremendous amount about construction and the business aspect. And he had no issues giving this company to a woman. He didn’t discriminate.”
It’s also important to be a mentor, says architect Terrence E. O’Neal, who serves the National Organization of Minority Architects in that role. “We hold study sessions in my office for architecture graduates and architecture interns who are studying for the architecture exam,” he says.
Some companies have taken a pro-active approach to diversity although projects don’t require it. For instance, Forest City Ratner and its partner, Turner Construction, recently made the news by training small businesses to qualify to work on Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards project. “We’ve had programs like this ever since MetroTech,” says Bob Sanna, executive vice president, director of design development and construction for Forest City Ratner. “Women and minorities have greater barriers because their companies are smaller and don’t have the resumes and have cash-flow issues. The second obstacle is having bonding capabilities to support them going after a bigger job. To step up to contracts of $1 million or more, you have to have project managers and have to spend money to bid.”
Having experience with the corporate world broadened the horizons of O’Neal, who opened his eponymous architecture firm 13 years ago. O’Neal, the 2006 president of the American Institute of Architects for New York State and the first African-American to hold that post, says that focusing on clear goals and networking are among the keys to his success. “The American Institute of Architects has been a very helpful resource,” he says, “and the National Organization of Minority Architects is a good opportunity for social interaction among peers.”
Frankel says that now is the time for women to enter commercial real estate and construction because “they have more of an opportunity in these fields than in others like banking and Wall Street.”
The statistics, Janis adds, are encouraging: In 1986, the number of female-owned construction businesses nationwide was less than 1%; today it is 10% and growing. Sanna fleshes out the data with three Brooklyn companies that are among the success stories: Dolly Williams’ A. Williams Construction; Monica Foster’s F&R Installers Corp.; and Allen Jenkins’ Paladin Construction Corp.
Citing trail-blazers like CB Richard Ellis’ Mary Ann Tighe and Darcy Stacom, Pomerantz says that “commercial real estate will reach a level where being a woman is not an issue.”
In the construction industry, Medaglia sees positive changes. “In the past five years, I feel like I’m on a level playing field,” she says. “It’s not as difficult for women to break into the construction business; although there are only a handful of female-headed construction firms in New York City, sometimes now there are more women than men at the table.”
But that doesn’t mean that every male broker is enlightened. “The hardest thing is every day I have to convince brokers that women are a minority in the real estate business,” Pulice says. “Unless the companies say that they need minority participation, it doesn’t happen, and individual brokers still have to be convinced that you can’t be five suits talking to five suits.”
That message must be gotten across, she says, without breaking the male-perceived ladylike code of conduct stereotypically expected of women. “You can’t slam them on the head because then you are considered a word you can’t say, but when I do get through, it’s absolutely golden because they call me.”
In architecture, O’Neal says, the education has to begin earlier and at a different level. “Compared to some of he professions like law and medicine, there are far fewer African-American architects,” he says. “That’s because everyone starts out life having experience with the medical field, and most of us have had to see an attorney. But in the African-American community, architects are not well known; it’s easy not to be exposed to them. It’s good to expose young people to architecture.”
She has no crystal ball, but when Ortiz looks to the future, she keeps a positive attitude. “I think we will break the glass ceiling,” she says. “We’ve come a long way, and we can go higher. It’s taken a long time, but it won’t take as long as it did to get where we are now.”