June 29, 2006 | Read Time: 1 minute
Photograph by Ken Yanoviak
Ask a teenage girl about her career plans, and jobs like commercial real-estate developer, lender, or appraiser aren’t likely to be on the tip of her tongue.
But a new career-exploration program is trying to change that. This spring, 19 chapters of the Commercial Real Estate Women Network organized events that exposed nearly 600 young women, many from poor neighborhoods, to job opportunities related to real estate.
“We have to get them into the pipeline early to let them know about it, or they’re never going to know about it at all,” says Anne DeVoe Lawler, a commercial real- estate lawyer in Seattle and chair of the network’s charitable arm, the CREW Foundation, in Lawrence, Kan.
The Seattle chapter’s daylong program took place at a partially completed shopping, entertainment, and office complex just outside the city. Participants took a “hard-hat tour,” learned how people in the construction industry work together to plan, design, and build the project, and did hands-on activities — like learning how to use an architect’s scale to measure a square foot — to get a taste of the different careers.
In Boston, San Francisco and other cities, the program was offered as a course that took place over a number of weeks.
Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real-estate company in New York, contributed $100,000 to support the program, which the CREW Foundation hopes to expand to other cities next year. KeyBank donated $50,000, while Starbucks Coffee Company provided $25,000.
Here, girls from two high schools in Philadelphia tour an indoor construction site in a downtown office building.
