Covid-19 Drove Women Out Of The Workforce. Can CRE Bring Them Back In?

Bisnow’s Kelsey Neubaur & Matt Rothstein discuss the impact of Covid-19 on women in commercial real estate. Excerpt below, visit www.bisnow.com for the whole article.

In 2012, then-26-year-old Natalie Wainwright was an unemployed single mom living in Las Vegas. Desperate, she managed to find a receptionist job with Cushman & Wakefield Commerce from a Craigslist ad. With little money to spend and a big impression to make, Wainwright went to Goodwill for a designer suit to wear to her new job.

“I did the best I could to look the part that I wanted to be because I knew that I couldn't support my children on $12 an hour,” she said. “I knew that this was an opportunity. I just knew that I was onto something and this could change me and my kid's life and get us out of the situation that we were in.” 

Wainwright worked tirelessly, she said, and eventually caught the attention of a team of brokers, who hired her as their sole administrator. She borrowed money from her father to get her broker’s license and spent years as a broker at Cushman & Wakefield. Nearly a decade later, Wainwright is a vice president at LogicCRE, an active broker in the Las Vegas office market and a leader among women in real estate nationwide.

Wainwright’s story is far from unique in commercial real estate: one of a woman who would otherwise never think of a career in the industry before landing an entry-level job. Without those jobs, which don’t necessarily require deep experience or specialization, the potential for women to have better representation at the highest levels for the industry is severely diminished. https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/commercial-real-estate/pandemic-effect-womens-pipeline-to-real-estate-108872