Attracting Women to Work in Real Estate Investing

Lindsay
Welcome to our podcast today. I am Lindsey McMillan, and I am based in PineBridge. Ireland, and also on the podcast today we have Kristen Kozlowski. Delighted to see you here today, Kristen. Kristen is a managing director in PineBridge Benson Elliot, and we are here today to talk about how to attract women to work in real estate investing. Good morning, Kristen.

Kristen
Good morning. Thanks for having me.

Lindsay

Delighted to have you. So, what we're going to do is just run through a few questions. So maybe we'll start at the beginning? Kristin, maybe you can tell me, how did you get started in real estate?

Kristen
Yeah, I would like to say that I was very focused and knew exactly what I wanted to do. But that is not my story. I was doing my undergrad in finance, with really no idea whatsoever of what I wanted to do with that when I graduated. And I was sitting in a course, that was essentially a series of guest speakers. And there was a man who came in and spoke about his company's program of historic redevelopment. They would find these beautiful buildings that essentially become derelict. And they would refurbish them and turn them into hotels. And the tangible results of this, right, they were transforming these corners of communities for the better by investing in real estate. This just really appealed to me versus all of these intangible aspects of finance that you could pursue. And that was it for me, I essentially chased the man down after the class forced him to give me an internship. And that was it I was in I was in real estate from that day forward.

Lindsay
Excellent. Sounds like a good way to start. You got some help along the way. Was there anyone in particular, apart from this man, once we get your first break? Were there people who stood out to you along the way in terms of your career path to date?

Kristen
I think a lot of people talk about mentors. And I, perhaps, have a counter view on mentors, I wouldn't say that I've ever really had a mentor. And it's not something that to me is important, or that I would advise anyone they need to seek out. But there are very important roles that people have played in my career that I would say are very important for everyone. And the first one of those roles is having someone who will bring you along. And my first boss in that job, the internship that turned into a full-time job, my boss brought me to everything. And there was no call, there was no meeting, there was no trip, no site visit, that he didn't want me to sit in on. And the learning you get out of that kind of experience is so phenomenal. And I think everyone needs someone at every point in their career, really, that will bring them along to meetings that they would otherwise not be prepared for. How else can you gain the confidence or the knowledge to take that next step in your career. So that was incredibly helpful to me.
The second type of person that I have been lucky enough to have in my career is someone who will advocate for you. And maybe you can have a mentor who does this too. But to me, that person who will behind the scenes, put you forward and talk you up and give you extra confidence, who will push you forward in a way in your organization that you wouldn't be able to do on your own has really been invaluable for me, as well.
And then the last I would say is someone who you can aspire to be like. For me, Trish Barrigan, who was one of the founders, and was the managing partner of Benson Elliot. When I joined, was that person for me? You know, finding a female founder, owner, and managing partner of a firm in real estate is really rare. And seeing those people that you could be like, in your industry is, is so important. So those are those are my three people, someone to bring you along, someone who will advocate for you and someone who you want to aspire to be like.

Lindsay
Sounds like a lot of interesting people along the way. Sounds good. Was there any time when you felt that you were held back because you're a woman in your career so far?

Kristen
You know, I don't think that there has ever been someone intentionally holding me back. But I will say, there have been roles, there have been points in my career, where the culture of a group of people I was working with made it harder, I think, to progress.
I have very often been the only woman in the room in my career. But only at certain points did I feel like I was the only woman in the room. And I think I have spent small chunks, luckily, of my career in a culture where I really felt like I was the only woman in the room. And in those circumstances, I found it hard to really have a voice I wasn't speaking up. I wasn't making an impact, like I normally do. And I think when I realized that the culture I was in was not going to push me forward, that's when I knew it was time for me, really to find somewhere else find a culture that no longer made me feel like I was the odd person out.

Lindsay
Makes complete sense. Very good. And would you generally recommend real estate as a career for women?

Kristen
I would recommend real estate as a career for anyone. And I do think that getting to people early in their career path to tell them that real estate is a possibility is really important. I do think that there are many women there are many young people perhaps from you know, not so privileged backgrounds that have no idea that real estate is a career path that they can go down. And so, something I've spent some time pondering is how do we get to people early enough that they can make the educational or early career decisions that they need to in order to pursue real estate. Like there's some really great charitable organizations out there trying to do things like this, and we in real estate could spend more time partnering with those types of groups. But I would say that, that women coming into real estate need to do that with their eyes wide open. Because even within alternatives, alternatives don’t have a great track record of having many senior women. And real estate is one of the worst. So we have 36% intake in junior roles of women. But that drops to below 10% of senior roles that are currently held by women in real estate. And it's not as easy to find a culture that works for you when there are not very many women running organizations. And so I think women need to know that this is a bit of a battle, that it's something they can make a difference in during their career span and go into their career wanting to make the world a little bit of a better place.

Lindsay
Would you say that you got some good advice along the way? And what would your advice be?

Kristen
Lots of good advice. Can I give you two answers? Do I have to choose just one?

Lindsay
Two is fine.

Kristen
Okay. The first bit of advice that has always stuck with me, is the most important thing that you can do for your career, is to choose your partner wisely. And you know, this person means your husband, your wife, your partner. And I think that is so incredibly true. Because if you are sharing your life with someone who at any place in their head believes that your career is less important than theirs, that is going to be something that will really be a struggle, and I am lucky enough to have a husband who has at no point in his head does he think that my career is less important than his and that really has made all of the difference in the way that we have lived our life. So that's the first one sort of a hard piece of advice if you're too far down that path but if you're early in your life a good thing to keep in mind.

The second thing that has really stuck with me is I'm sure everyone has heard this stat, right, that men will apply for a job if they meet 60% of the qualifications. And women will only apply if they meet 100%. And I really have kept that little stat tucked away in the back of my head in order to encourage myself, and in moments of a, you know, a crisis of confidence.

And I think it really speaks to it, we all need to have an understanding of how the real world works, we perhaps grew up being told we should follow the rules, and you should work hard and keep your head down and behave. But that's really not the way the world works. Once you get past school, and realizing that you need to play the right game, if you want to succeed has really been important to me. I tend to overanalyze, I tend to be someone who wants to be 110% prepared. And while I do think that has served me well, in some ways, I sometimes need to force myself to take a bit of a jump. And so, I was very grateful when I heard that stat, and it's something I remind myself of.

Lindsay
Very good. And was there any advice that you got along the way that was maybe not as helpful?

Kristen
You know, I'm sure that all of these little pearls of wisdom work for someone, right. But the one that really has never worked for me is I was told, actually early in my MBA program, that you need to have a 10-year plan, you know, you need a vision, you should be able to draw a picture of where you want to be in 10 years’ time. And that was just panic inducing for me.
I had no idea what I want to be doing in 10 years, I don't know what the world could look like in 10 years. And I think planning is always important. But having a plan, having this pressure of you need to know now, what you're going to do in 10 years was not helpful for me at all. And I've since realized, the way I live my life, I want to keep my eyes open, I want to see what opportunities arise. I want to see how things evolve. And I will gather information and make a plan as I go.

And so, you know, anyone who tries to tell me now come up with a 10-year plan: out the door not listening to that advice anymore.

Lindsay
You've had a number of jobs over your career, is there anything you would do differently?

Kristen
This is such a hard question. There's nothing I can think of in terms of a specific role or, or a direction that I took, that I would change. But maybe little, tiny steps along the way, I would have changed. And I think most of those I would put down to being afraid to fail. And if I could change something about myself, it's something I still work on. I would be less afraid of failure. The people who talk about having a growth mindset who really can look at failure as a learning opportunity, I think that is such an amazing quality. And it's something that I continue to work on. So, all of the times I didn't do something because I didn't want to fail, I would have changed those.

Lindsay
Just in terms of what you think we could do. What could companies do to encourage women's careers? Is there anything that springs to mind at all?

Kristen
How long do you have Lindsey? I have lots of ideas. I guess the first thing I would say is organizations need to be really clear on why they want to encourage women to be in top management positions in their firm.

You know, I saw a stat that Prequin put out recently that in 2021, we made a 0.3% improvement on diversity and alternatives. 0.3%. And it's going to take many, many years for us to make any tangible difference at 0.3%. And the only way to really advance that is leaders need to be willing to take big risks to put women forward. And if you don't know why you're doing it, if the organization doesn't know why you're doing it, that's going to be really difficult to do, right? We don't take big risks in real estate, unless there's the potential of a big payout. And so, what is that big payout of putting women forward? And, you know, there's plenty of research out there about the financial success of companies that are diverse. So, you know, I don't think that's news to anyone. I read something recently about the risk-taking of organizations that are that are diverse, have senior teams that are diverse. And I thought this was interesting, statistically significant differences in diverse firms in terms of litigation risk, failure, risk and operational risk.

If you want your company to be around in 10 years, you are much better off to have women in senior positions. And that seems like a risk worth taking to me. So, we need to talk about these things. We need to set goals and understand how having women in senior positions helps us get to those goals. That's the first thing that I would say.

One of the one of the things that has been sticking in my head, as of late is, there is a whole generation of women, at least one generation of women who have taken big chunks of time out of their career, whether that's to care for children or other work / life pressures that arose. And wouldn't it be great if we could attract these senior, experienced women to come back and work in our organization?

You know, I've already talked about hhow it drops off between junior and senior positions in our in our industry. But we have all of these great experienced women sitting out there who may not feel like they are valued in our organizations don't know what the answer is, but I would love to figure out a way to welcome these women back into the workforce.

Lindsay
I think that sounds like a great plan. But is it something that you've seen that works well, in practice?

Kristen
So, one thing that I have seen happening more and more, is funds being set up that are dedicated to working with diverse managers. And I think we need more and more of this, right? If we're thinking about the ‘why’, and firms understand that either they're going to be able to fundraise more easily or in the future won't be able to fundraise if they don't have a diverse workforce. That's a really good ‘why’.

And so, I think these organizations that are setting up funds that target diverse-owned managers is such a great idea, I would love to see more of this. And then I also would say, sort of on a more personal level, the point that I touched on earlier about bringing someone along, having someone to bring you along, this is something that I would like to encourage all senior people to do, whether it's a man or a woman. Women need to be exposed to these top conversations, right?

The decision-making conversations, the investing conversations, and we know we don't have a 50/50 split of who is qualified and ready to be in those conversations. So, I just would encourage senior men and women to bring more junior women along, let them learn, let them listen, because we really need to make sure they are ready and able to jump when we have senior positions that are open.

Lindsay
I would agree with that. I had a similar experience. I worked in Australia, in corporate finance. And at the time, I had a boss who brought me to every meeting. So, there was nothing I didn't see. So, I worked on every single aspect of every deal. I went to every meeting with the senior executives and it was an amazing opportunity to network and see how these work in practice. You're working from everyone from the CFO to the CEO, and they were major decisions on their company's behalf. So, but there was nothing I was excluded from, that was an amazing experience.

Kristen
We know that women tend to be less willing to put themselves forward. So, this is something really tangible you can do to give women the confidence to say, yes, I am ready for the next big thing if they have been able to sit and listen and learn.

Lindsay
Best way to learn, best way to learn, very good. What would you recommend to them, given your experience to do in terms of making the most of their careers?

Kristen
I think, well, this advice would apply to everyone. But you really need to be prepared to advocate for yourself, as well. Great if you have someone advocating for you. But speaking up, being really clear about what you want, where you are going, what is your goal, we need to verbalize these things, we need to make sure that the people around us understand them, or they're not going to be able to help you get there.

I can think of a few different examples in my career, where perhaps, uncharacteristically, I spoke up before I overanalyzed and really clearly stated what I wanted. And, shockingly enough, people then help you get there. So, a role I had in the US. I had just been promoted; I had a new boss. And he asked me, in my first day, what do you want to do next? Which I thought was a great question. I don't think anyone else has ever asked me that on my first day. And didn't really think before I leapt, I just said, I want you to transfer me to London.

And of course, then I panicked and thought, oh, no, he's going be offended that I have, you know that I'm not committed to this current role and I want to leave. But he did not feel that way. Of course, he was understanding that I was not going to be in the current role forever and wanted to help me get to that that next place. And he did. It took four years, maybe longer than I thought it would. But every chance he could he helped me get there.

And had I not said I want to be transferred to London, he never would have known, and I wouldn't perhaps have found the opportunity. So, speak up. If you know what you want, clearly verbalize that to the people that are around you.

Lindsay
So, Kristen, just to wrap up today's podcast, would you feel optimistic about the future in terms of
D & I in real estate and financial services?

Kristen
Well, I've already told you that I find the current progress, the current pace of progress, a bit depressing. Less than 1% is not where anyone wants us to be. I will say, people are asking good questions. They’re asking how organizations are being run. They're asking about how diverse teams are. But I do not think that's filtered all the way through to decision making yet, and I think it really needs to.

So, I would go back to my point about, we need to be clear about why we're asking these questions and why we are setting goals and make sure everyone knows, because the questions aren't going to filter through to action until we're clear about the why.

But the second point, I would say is the pools of capital, that are targeting diverse teams are still quite small. And when those pools of money get larger, when we can convince more people, they should be wanting to work with diverse teams, and they should be investing mostly with diverse teams, the pace of progress will pick up. So, when I see those two things start to happen when we get real traction. I will become more optimistic.

Lindsay
Thank you. So, all that leaves me to do now is to thank you, Kristen, for your time today. Thanks for participating in our podcast on real estate and attracting women to real estate. Thank you very much.

Kristen
Thank you, Lindsay.

Lindsay
My pleasure. And also thank you for listening. And you can find out more about PineBridge and our D&I on our website PineBridge.com. And we look forward to sharing more podcasts in the future.

ENDS