 Hello, is my mic on? Hey. As people are trickling in, I think we're at 9.47 here, so we may as well get things started. I know here at SoCAP, particularly in these morning sessions, there's a little bit of a laissez-faire attitude to when they start. So I assume we'll add audiences as we go, but let's get going. My name is Ruben Teg. I am with Prudential. I work in our impact investments group. I lead the real estate investing practice there. And Prudential has about a $1 billion impact investments portfolio. Real estate comprises about half of that. And in that real estate portfolio, we have a pretty broad range of partners across geographies and product types. But one of the reasons that we're sponsoring this track, this racial diversity track across SoCAP this year, is that we do not feel like we have sufficient partner diversity for our investments. And particularly, that is true in the world of real estate. And that has been painful and uncomfortable for me for some years now. And I think that this panel is reflective of the steps that we are trying to take to figure out how we can address that and do a better job with bringing in a representative series of partners for our deals. We have great panelists here today to talk about the issue of racial diversity in real estate. I'm going to let them introduce themselves to you and tell you a little bit about how they got here. And then I'm hoping we can have a good conversation about where people aren't succeeding necessarily in breaking through some of the barriers in the industry, where those barriers are, what institutions like Prudential can do to address those barriers, and what people who are here at SoCAP can do in order to help break some of those barriers down and overcome the just very obvious disparity in terms of outcomes in the industry. To that point, I've got a few statistics I wanted to use to set the scene. In the United States, a century ago, there was a 30% gap in home ownership. Just starting at the basic home ownership level between African-Americans and whites, you had about a 50% home ownership rate among white people and about 20% among African-Americans. Today, home ownership rates have gone up, but that 30% gap is still there. We're at about 70% for white people and about 40% for African-Americans. So even though home ownership as a society has increased, we are actually amazingly retaining the exact same gap that we had 100 years ago, which is, to me, I find that shocking. And then you move up from there into the real estate industry itself. So home ownership is one way to build wealth. Another way is to be a participant in an industry that is a massive wealth generator in the United States. But if you look out across the real estate industry, using EEOC data, something like 2.5% of all senior positions in all real estate firms are held by African-Americans relative to about, I think, 12% of the population. And then when you drill down even further into asset managers in real estate, we're talking about something like 1 to 1.5% of total AUM is managed by African-Americans. And that is quite striking. Obviously, it's way out of line with where we are as a society. It's also out of line, as it turns out, with other professions. I mean, even if you look out at, for example, law firms, which are no, there's not a perfect story to be told there in the legal industry. But even there, 15% of major law firm lawyers are African-American and about 9% of partners are. So that's an industry that has made real strides well. I think the real estate industry has, in many ways, remained relatively stagnant. And I think that's sort of what I'd like to explore today, why that is, and what we can do about it. So I'll pause there. I'm going to just turn it over, David. I'll start with you because you're next to me. And I would just love it if each of you could give a short bio of yourselves. And then we'll dig in with some questions. Sure. My name is Dave Bramble. That says Yard 56. That's because that's a project that we did with Prudential. MCB Real Estate is the name of our company. We're based in Baltimore. And we do retail, industrial, office, and mixed use up and down the East Coast. So we are operator, and we typically raise capital from institutional investors to do transactions, either specific transactions or a series of transactions or joint ventures, that kind of thing. I founded the company with my partner, I guess, about 12 years ago. And we started off very small, like a lot of groups do, doing small deals and then progressing to doing bigger deals. And now our portfolio is 8 million feet, about 2 million feet under construction. Total value of a little over $1 billion. And we manage capital for many of the largest institutions in the country, including New York Common, New York City, Illinois Municipal Prudential, and lots of big private equity firms, too. So our path was very typical from a small operator raising money from high net worth investors to growing to raising money from large investors. So that's sort of my story. Hello. Thank you for inviting me to participate on the panel. My name is Pamela West. I am with Nuvine, which is an asset manager for TIA. Used to be CREF, now we're just TIA. I've been there for 12 years and started out on the traditional rural estate side. And now I'm focused on the impact investing team here. Well, not here, but in New York. And our portfolio is about a billion dollars. We focus on global private equity as well as affordable housing domestically. And a lot of what we do is focus on health care and education. And I specifically focus on the housing side. And we have a dual strategy of investing in funds as well as direct deals. And I joined the team officially about a year ago. And Daryl will tell you he's one of our investment fund managers. And I think you're the second largest fund manager that we have on the affordable housing side. And so a lot of what we do is focus on planet and people. And we have also a resource efficiency strategy that focuses on finding investments that take materials and turn them into something better for the environment. Good morning. My name is James Walls. I am with the Annie E. Casey Foundation based in Baltimore, Maryland. I sit on the social investments team at Casey. The mission of Casey is to build a brighter future for all children, especially children of color and also low income children. So we have a very broad mandate. So therefore our teams are very broad. So we have national teams that focus on children in the system, for example, so our child welfare team, our general justice team. We also have play space strategies in Baltimore and Atlanta. And so we go through a variety of impact verticals on our team. But right now we're concentrating on affordable housing, quality affordable housing, quality job creation, and then closing the racial wealth gap are our three priorities for the social investments team. The foundation's endowment is $2.7 billion, and we manage our carve out of that endowment. Good morning. I'm Daryl Carter. I am the founder and CEO of Ivana Capital Management. We own and operate about 11,000 apartment units in about 72 communities around the US. We're in 12 states, primarily on the two coasts. I'm based in Southern California. This is a second company that I'm building in the commercial real estate sector. And diversity is extremely important. And I probably got my first lesson in diversity as a young banking analyst at Continental Illinois Bank in Chicago in the early 80s. And I know many of you were not born at that time. But I remember being asked by one of my bosses, who is a woman who, to go look at a property in St. Louis. And when I came back, she said, well, what did you think? And I said, it's nice. And she said, well, did you feel safe there? And I said, yeah, I felt safe. And then she pointed out, Daryl, you're black. You're six foot eight, 250 pounds. You grew up on the west side of Detroit. You played sports in the Big Ten. You're probably safe in most places. I'm five foot white and 100 pounds. And how would I feel there? And I'm like, ooh, that's a good point. And ever since that early lesson, I learned the importance of diversity not just because it's the right thing, but people have different perspectives. And when you're in the investment business, you want to make sure you're not missing things by your own biases. And it's not an issue of whether they're black, white, whatever bias is, but everyone has biases. And it's important to reflect, have an investment team that has different views and different opinions. So anyway, I think it's a great panel. And I thank Socap for putting this on. Great. So I think I'd like to start at the base of the talent pyramid. And the question I have is, at the entry level into the real estate industry, whether that's real estate brokerage or analyst type positions or junior positions at a bank, where are the barriers or what are the reasons that you don't see more people of color coming in at that level? Or what are the things that could be done that would increase the number of people coming into the talent pathway? And I'll throw that out there for whoever wants to take it. If nobody does, David, I'm going to pick you to go first. I don't mind being picked. I think that the biggest challenge is for, and I think you sort of got to break it down, there's lots of pathways into things like residential sales. Because there are other, and I'm speaking from an African-American perspective. And I think also there is a, there's lots of people that look like you who do that. You're comfortable talk to them saying, how do I get into this business? And then you get opportunities to do it. It has a very low startup cost, and then you can do it. I think when you talk about coming into the institutional space, I think it's extremely difficult. Because the pathways that are sort of designated basically come through fancy business schools and things like that. And if you're not sort of on those tracks or you don't have those relationships, it's very difficult to get those jobs. To get that first analyst job at a big public real estate company or a big real estate asset manager is virtually impossible without a relationship. Or unless you're coming with sort of the resume opportunity, sort of, I have the resume for this job. So I think that that's the biggest barrier or entry sort of for the operating guys. And then for the entrepreneurial side of real estate, the biggest barrier is capital. Like you can't really be a real estate investor unless you can either raise money or get money or you have some way to sort of get started in the business. So you add all those things up and it becomes very difficult to sort of break into the industry. That's why this conversation is so important. Because as we get more senior professionals, more senior female and more senior minority professionals, we have to be intentional about creating pathways for people who otherwise wouldn't have access to sit down and talk to somebody about, well, how do I get from flipping two houses to buying an office building? Like what's that step? And how do I create those opportunities? So that's sort of my sense of it. I would say there's something else that, and we have incredible diversity throughout our organization in every area. And why is that? I mean, one of the fascinating things that happens is that many of the, I have friends, I've been in the industry for 38 years who are CEOs of REITs and other types of companies. And one gentleman in particular who you might know, Saul, who is a senior in our acquisition team. Well, this African-American, he had worked five years at another company doing due diligence and underwriting. He wanted to do acquisitions where he's on the front line of marketing. He left that company. Now, this is a young man who graduated from Brown University. He then went to and got his MBA at the University of Wisconsin, very, very good school. He comes back, and he wants to go back to this company, potentially on the acquisition side. So the CEO of the company, and I've had this happen a dozen times, calls me and says, would you talk to Saul? Saul wants to do acquisitions, and I'm not sure, and everything. So then, of course, I happened to talk to Saul. I met him, and I'm like, god, this guy is talented. I hired him on the spot. Then my friend called me, and he said, what's up with hiring Saul? I wanted you to talk to him. I said, you know, Saul didn't want to talk. Saul wanted a job. And the fact that he worked for five years, and you didn't realize that he was talented, or you didn't see him in that role, I did. So I hired him. Like, Saul didn't want to talk. He wanted a job. And so those are the kinds of things. And candidly, a lot of my diverse employees come from, believe it or not, there is a woman CEO who said, well, I've got this person who heads research. She wants to do acquisitions. And her exact quote was, and the guys didn't think she could interact with the brokers. And I'm like, OK, met her, incredibly bright, offered her a job immediately. And because at the end of the day, if you have money, the brokers, you can interact with them. And so I think we try to overcomplicate it. But part of it starts with, in across the industry, there are very few, I mean, young talent when they come in and why a lot of them go to the tech industry, they want to see people that may look like them that are not all of the same ethnicity or gender. And they want to see diversity. And so many are attracted to our company because we are diverse. And I think that is one of the challenges, particularly with the entry-level people, because they have a lot of choices. And they want to go somewhere where they feel as if they can grow. Yeah. Do either of you want to jump in? You know, I was going to say, too, I think to the point of growing up, I didn't even know there was a career to be had in real estate. And I come from a long line of teachers, and I thought I'm going to be a teacher. That was my career goal. And I actually was a teacher for a couple of years. And so I ended up falling into real estate. And when I decided that that was my career, that I wanted to pursue, I went back to business school. And literally there were, I was the only African-American woman in the real estate program. And there was one African-American male in the real estate program. And to this day, those numbers still stick. And so as I'm starting to interview people for positions, and I'm looking at the resumes that come in, there are a lot of white males that come in with real estate experience. And there are very few minority candidates posting for positions or making it through the phone screenings. And so I find that very interesting. And I've challenged our company to look in other places to recruit. Like we're in New York City. So NYU and Columbia are great schools. But there are other schools, historically Black colleges and universities, that we should also be reaching out to find candidates. And so I think that's just, that's one issue. And I find it amazing that a lot of the resumes we have, like these kids are coming out of high school and they're undergrad with significant real estate experience. And when you look at our minority candidates, they have no experience. But we have to look at how talented they are. To your point, Darrell, about Saul, we have to look for talented individuals. And I think if we're setting the bar there, then we're missing out on some great people. So I come from this from the funder side. And so what we see is a lack of talent in every space. So we see a lack of talent. And when I mean lack of talent, I mean a lack of available talent, because we're not doing our job to reach out to the talent that exists. So as foundations, we're very close-knit entities. And so we get referrals from friends. We get referrals from colleagues. But we are not reaching out and going out to the HBCUs, for example. Like we have a strong HBCU in Baltimore, actually, too, in Morgan State and Coppin State University. And we don't actively recruit from those schools as a foundation. So we don't do enough in terms of our outreach and recruiting to really, really bring and diversify the talent pool. So that's one thing. The second thing I would talk about is, as philanthropic capital, we are probably the most patient capital. We don't provide enough to entities, especially developers of color, to allow them to develop talent. So we provide our capital so they can go build units. But we don't give them capital to actually develop their organization. And so we see a lot of that playing out in the funder space. Can I just piggyback? Because I think there are two things. One is, when we were doing our initial call, you guys said something that changed my thinking, and it had to do with the resume thing you were talking about. Real estate is so specific in terms of this guy's an asset manager, this guy's an acquisitions. And what Daryl said, which I want to make sure it gets out here because it was so important, is we have to, when you see something, when you see the talent, you can't just focus on, oh, he's only been doing asset, or she's only been doing asset management for 10 years, so she's not going to be a good acquisitions person. We have to look past that if we're serious about sort of changing the diversity and changing the talent pool that we have to suck from. And I think that I never really thought about that. So many times I would just say, oh, this guy just isn't the right guy, he hasn't done enough deals. And we have to reach beyond that. It takes a little bit of risk, but you've got to be able to do it. And I think that's critical. And then I wanted to piggyback on the HBCU thing. I was on a panel recently for the International Council of Shopping Centers, and we were talking about institutional real estate investment. And I was surprised that an entire segment was just about diversity and how do we increase diversity? And there seems to be, this conversation I think is going to places other than obviously this whole conferences about the intersection of social ideas and capital. But this was just about money. This is just about how do we do good deals. And it was interesting that that comment about, hey, we need to have diversity of thought so we understand the investments we're making, it came up. And it didn't come from a black person, because I was the only black person there and it wasn't my idea. And they brought it up. And then they explained to me, which I think is awesome in their ways that we should be able to piggyback on this, that they have now formed a relationship with Florida A&M University, where they are actively recruiting and trying to suck people into the real estate programs and get them trained up so that they can come work for folks like you. So I think that I was number one, I just wanted to make sure that I piggybacked and brought that out, because it really did change my thinking. And I think that's super valuable. And I want more people to hear that. And number two, it's great that people are now focusing on trying to create these relationships with HBCUs and trying to figure out how we can draw some of this talent into real estate. Just to add on to that, I think you're starting to see more conversations like the one we're having at KC about how do we support our investees to be able to recruit. So we can provide grant capital, for example, for interstate programs. Like we can provide more patient capital so you can actually build up your talent pool so they can actually make you money after about two or three years. Because the first year analysts, a lot of times, it's a loss, right, if you think about your balance sheet. So we are really trying to figure out ways how do we support our investees through our capital deployment. Great, thanks. A bunch of things there that we could go off on. I wanted to stay with the HBCU conversation quickly, just because one of the things that I, in doing my research for this panel discovered is that none of the biggest 20 HBCUs offer a master's in real estate currently, which was surprising to me, and maybe wouldn't be surprising given what we're talking about here. But that feels like, to me, like a place where maybe the talent pipeline could connect even more directly because like you were saying, David, those masters, those MBA jobs are the ones that really help you elevate yourself in the industry. And Daryl, I wanted to pick up on something you said, which is this question about your CEO friends who can't see certain people in positions. What candidly is preventing them from doing that? Is it a failure of imagination? Is it explicit bias or implicit bias? Is it their life experience? Like how would you sort of characterize that? And then, having characterized it, how do you address it? How do we fix it? Because we can't put you in charge of every single real estate company out there, unfortunately. You know, I would actually challenge some of the premise. I'm not sure it's always even race. I think that the real estate industry, there's a structural aspect of people who do acquisitions, well, I need to find someone who does acquisitions. And you know, because just unfortunately our head of acquisitions just took another job who was someone who was in the closing area at my other company who we trained and mentored to do acquisitions. And actually, I went to him and I said, you know, we're vertically integrated so we do on-site property management. And you know, one of our property managers who's an African-American woman who runs a $50 million asset, I said, you know, I think, you know, she'd be great in acquisitions. And he said, well, she's not done acquisitions. And I said, she runs a $50 million investment, she knows something, because we've just entrusted her with that. And I think part of the, is an industry issue is that we look at, you know, people in certain stereo silos and we stereotype. And I think it's important that, you know, that's part of it. The other part is, you know, just when you go to, you know, I mean, I was on a corporate board where the acquisitions team was run by a gentleman who had been at CBRE. He, who was white, who had 10 other white males who all had been at CBRE. And I said, do you think you might at least get someone from Grubbin Ellis? Or at least some level of diversity. And, you know, and he said, well, these are people I feel comfortable with. And that's one of the things that we have to get out of is just what, you know, comfort levels. And, you know, I would say that some of our best hires have been people who are diametrically opposed to, you know, everything that we do, but they have great ideas and they do it in a respectful way. But you wanna have people pushing back, you know, because you don't wanna build clones of organizations. But, you know, I just think that part of it is industry where people, you know, you go to a PREA, which is Pension Real Estate Association. Amazingly, there's a lot of diversity amongst people and client services that are calling on public pension funds. There are a lot of people of color, a lot of women. But the wealth creation in these companies are in the acquisitions and portfolio management. You look over there, all white males. And so part of it is just looking at the industry in a way that we take people and, you know, talented people can do a lot of things. I mean, I'm a big subscriber of the best available athlete of, you know, getting talented people and talented people can do a lot of things. Does anyone wanna add to that or should I move on? No, I mean, you know what, as a real life example, I had a woman who mentored, I came out of CBRE. So I understand the lack of diversity there and that was 20 years ago. But there was a woman who mentored me and said, and I'm in acquisitions and I've always been in acquisitions. She said, never go to asset management because when you go to asset management, you will never make your way back to acquisitions. And so that is the silo effect. And it is a very industry specific issue that we have. But I also think that beyond that, real estate also is a relationship business and what I've seen over the years is people hire their friends and family. And that's really an underlying aspect of it. And so who has that hiring power certainly makes a big difference. Like how did our president get his first job? I think you did have some kind of connection. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and Pam, you mentioned something that was interesting, which is that you said you're seeing resumes of people who are accumulating real estate experience during high school and college. And who are these people? How are they getting, I mean, I certainly didn't do that. And do you feel like that is also because of family connections? They're working in their family's business and getting that? It is. When you dig in and you actually have the interview and you ask the question, how did you get this experience? And they'll say, oh, my dad knew this person and I interned at their company. And I hear that a lot. I mean, it's not just one or two examples. I hear that a lot. And they come with major experience. It's amazing. It happens to me all the time. I get a call from an investor or a friend saying, hey, my son or my daughter needs some experience. We take them for the summer. Next thing you know, they have a $50 million deal on their resume. So that's exactly what happens. Real estate is so relationship driven, as we all know. That's how deals happen. And so that doesn't shock me. It happens all the time. The only thing that I think that we have to do is as folks who can make that happen is be intentional about trying to get our friends who may not understand that their daughter could do this to say, hey, why don't you send her to me for the summer? Because we can make. I mean, if I want an intern, I make an intern. It's that simple. I don't have a big corporate infrastructure that I have to turn around to do an internship. So I have done that. I've called a friend who's a broker and said, hey, I'd like you to take these three kids, and I'll pay for them for the summer so that they can get some exposure to the business. So we actually have to try to do it. Otherwise it just won't happen by osmosis, I think, is part of the challenge that we have. Great. So pulling out of, and I appreciate your willingness, David and Daryl, in particular, to sort of think about what you ought to be doing with your own companies and your own businesses. And I actually read that what Jonathan Rose did with his firm is he created a committee for hiring talent that had diversity as one of its primary goals, and he withdrew himself from the committee. So when he gets those calls from friends, he just says, I'm not on the committee, so I can't actually influence who we're hiring at all. Sorry, submit the application. And that is at least one step he's taken. I think to try to find a broader pool. But I'm wondering what, from my standpoint and Pam, from your standpoint, we as asset managers and buyers and institutional allocators could be doing. What should be the burden and ask of us to change the industry? What's appropriate? And what do you think could work? So because we're on the impact team, we look at a lot of different metrics when we invest in fund managers. We do not have a formal emerging manager program. I wish we did. And I applaud the companies that actually do have those. I think there are some great fines and candidates that have come out of those programs. But what we do is measure diversity within companies and not just diversity among the entire company, but diversity amongst the C-suite and the senior leadership team. And we ask, and Daryl knows this because he gets this questionnaire from us every year, how diverse is your senior leadership team? And every year, we attend the meetings and we raise our hands and say, what are you doing about diversity within your company? Because not only are we just investing in your fund because we like the returns or we like the strategy, but we also want to invest in diverse companies. And we're an impact team and that's one of our measurements is gender and diversity. And so we invest with Jonathan. And I raise my hand every year and say, what are we doing about diversity? So it's the forefront. And we are seeing change because we ask that question. Have you ever not done a deal because you didn't like the answer to that question? We know because we do seek it out and we have to present that as part of our committee. So it never makes it, it wouldn't make it that far. It wouldn't get to the point of investment committee, but do you ever sit down for an initial meeting and sort of get the sense that this isn't going to go anywhere because the firm isn't thinking about it? I will tell you this. We did invest in a new fund manager earlier this year that had very little diversity on their team. And I said, your next hires, you need to look for diverse candidates. And within three months after we made the investment, he hired two minority. They listened. Yeah, so they listened. That money talks. And it matters. Money talks. I would just like to highlight the two Rubin and Pam on this panel of their companies. And those are two companies. And they were both our first investors, two of our first investors in this company, in our first fund. Hardest thing to do is to raise, it's an amazing thing. I built an incredible track record in the first company. We had built $3, $4 billion of assets under management when I sold my interest and then started over. Everyone thought I was an idiot, again. And so getting that first-time investor. But both of those companies, Prudential and Nuvine, it starts with their very diverse at the highest level. I've made presentations to Prudential's board. I can tell you there is a thoughtfulness about not only diversity, but how you invest. I am always amazed when if anyone has the opportunity and a couple of your colleagues, Rubin, took me. I mean, if anyone doesn't realize, Newark, New Jersey was a dead city 10, 15 years ago. And despite what anyone says of the mayor or Cory Booker or anything, Prudential's investment in that city, particularly downtown, was transformative. And I've taken a walk with some of your colleagues around downtown Newark, and it's amazing what has happened. And that just shows a company who's doing the right things. And I think long-term, those investments will be very, very profitable. And the same thing with Nuvine. And so there is a reason why your companies are successful. It starts at that diversity and a commitment to doing what's right. And I applaud both of you for that. Thank you. I mean, I think we take it seriously. And at Prudential, actually, we just this year from our group and from PGM Real Estate started something called the Diverse Partners Initiative where we're really looking to measure allocation of both capital and deal flow to diverse teams and setting concrete goals for achievement over the next few years in order to make sure that we're holding ourselves accountable that way, which feels kind of, it's brave because we could fail. But I think it's gonna be necessary to make sure that you actually get the results you want. I think that, I just wanna, that whole money talks thing, that's real. And the reality is that we're seeing this now from almost all of our institutional investors. And I believe it's because of the lead you guys have been taking in this space. They are now questioning and asking. Not just, it's interesting. Not just, as you said, who's diverse, who's on the management team. They also wanna know who we're doing business with. Who are the contracts going to? Are you including, are you giving opportunities for minority firms to bid on this business? Are you finding places for women-owned businesses? And that push has got to keep coming from the money. If it comes from the money, people will respond. Whether they're, some of them will respond because they'll say, oh, that's the right thing to do. And others will be like, hey, I need this money. So I'm gonna do what I have to do. Which is no different than a rich investor calling you up and saying, take my son as an internship. There's no difference between that. Well, actually, there is a difference. One has a good social status, but in other words, in terms of the pressure it puts on people to move in the right direction, I think it's critical. And I really applaud what you're doing and thank you for that. Oh, thank you. You know, I just wanna touch on that point. You know, and you say what are the business reasons we in turn, you know, diversity is very important to us. Very good friend of mine who is African-American is one of the largest general contractors in Southern California. He's doing all the work at LAX and the new stadium. We were doing a significant renovation, 528 apartments in Long Beach, California. And he said, you know, I have this incredibly talented Hispanic painter that could do your job. But they don't have the way the airport pays. They have the ability to structure the payments because they don't have that much bonding capacity. But for your job, they don't have the, they need probably a two to $3 million line of credit. And so we actually went to, and I saw their work and met them and incredibly talented and we did two things. One is we went to one of our banks and said, you know, and they're always trying to, a number of our banks, Wells Fargo Key Bank and others are always trying to do more in the community. So we set up this person to meet one of our bankers. They got the line of credit and that was one thing. But the second is we said, if you can do this job, we got four more for you to do. And so then, you know, they have just performed amazingly. And in today's world, when it's very difficult to get people the trades, cause they're so busy, this gentleman will not take a new job without calling me first to make sure that I didn't need him. You know, if I needed him, he would, you know, so we've built a relationship there where, you know, someone has executed, but we've created a partnership with someone where we are their priority. And that's a great benefit to us. So I just want to add a couple of things from, again, from the funder impact investor perspective. So we typically are going to focus not on the units being developed, but the enterprise that we're investing in. And so in doing that, we take a much more systems change approach. And so it's beyond just our capital. So as a large foundation, we could focus on policy. We could focus on advocacy. We could focus on providing subsidy capital. We can do a lot of things to be like strong partners with the asset managers as they're developing units, especially for us, we get to ask all of the tough questions and they have to answer to us all the time. Ruben knows now from the work that we're doing with them that he probably will talk about shortly. So for us, we try to be drivers of change, both at the enterprise level and the systems level to make the environment more fertile for diversity within real estate. Great, thank you. I mean, I and James, it's true, we have a partnership with Casey. I didn't want this to be too much bragging about Prudential and I appreciate all the complimentary comments. You invited us. I did. But I consider that more of a favor. I didn't invite you here to hear me talk about how great my employer is. That feels weird. No, but we did form a partnership with the Kresge and Casey foundations to directly try to use our dollars and their guarantee capacity to close the racial wealth gap. And on the real estate side, we are out there looking for partners of color who may lack capital and have a great deal and are looking for a source of capital that is coming to them and trying to find them and support them and grow their business. And we're also investing in closing the racial wealth gap in other ways as well, in other sectors. And using that partnership, I hope, to strike the right tone. I mean, it's not enough money to do the job on its own. The job is a trillion dollar job, a multi-trillion dollar job. The idea, I think, speaking for myself and Pam, I've heard you say this too, the idea is to set the best example and make others fall. Maybe, David, you've seen it. Making other people follow that example. And if we're doing that, great. That's how you get the trillion dollar change. We can start with the millions. I want to pause and give a chance if people in the audience have questions. I think maybe 15 minutes or so left. So if people do, I want to make sure we get those in. So yeah, there's a microphone coming to you. Sure. Thank you very much. First of all, this conversation is very much so timely and apropos and very sensitive to, in near and dear to my heart, being a former member of the commercial real estate sector. As you know, with any organization in real estate being no different, individuals typically recruited by an individual. But the culture is what helps them stay. Is there anything that's being uniquely done or can be uniquely done at some of the larger commercial real estate firms, different and apart from the typical employee research model, which most larger companies have. But as you said earlier, real estate is so uniquely driven by relationships in terms of you being able to prepare your career from one level to the next. Is there anything that can be uniquely done or is being uniquely done at some of these larger institutions, either at your firms or others that you're aware of, that can help ensure that people of color can stay in these positions, but also grow and develop? And Mr. Carter, it'd be great if you can give a little profile on Reese, which you and I talked about a little earlier. Does anyone want to talk to the, speak to the culture issue? The culture issue? Large institutions. We're talking about moving deals off the golf course and into someplace else, right? I mean, starting with sort of that kind of a perspective. Well, I'm on the outside, and I raise money from institutions. From what I see, there's nothing. There's literally nothing. At most of the investment partners we have, there's maybe one female, one or two females. Across all of these organizations, there's only two senior black professionals making decisions, and there's no one beneath them. If they do start, you will see an analyst or two pop up, then they tend to fall off. I don't know what's going on inside. Some of them I know are working on it. They have this idea that they're going to do something about it. But from the outside looking in, there doesn't seem to be hard strategies, other than, so it's hard to see from the outside. The organization that he's referencing, the Real Estate Executive Council, was something that my former partner and a good friend created probably 13, 14 years ago that brought real estate professional, senior professionals, but also people starting companies together to try to facilitate transactional flow. And we just had our conference about two weeks ago, and there were about 120 people there. The real interesting question is, and it's one that a good friend of mine, who many of you may know, Victor McFarlane, who's based up here, McFarlane Partners. Victor was honored by USC a couple of months ago, and I bought a table, and I invited my old partner and a few other African-Americans who had started businesses in the 90s, Richmond McCoy, if you know him, and one of the questions we asked that night, which is a very, very interesting question. We all started late 80s, early 90s. Was it harder then, or is it harder today? And I'm gonna tell you, I went back and forth in my head a lot, and I actually concluded, in some respects, which it shouldn't be, it's probably harder today for one reason, and that is that institutions, there's been this huge consolidation, where back when we started Capri Capital in 1991, maybe you had a company like Reef that had maybe four billion of assets under management, but today you've got Blackstone announcing a $20 billion real estate fund. There's been so much consolidation in the industry, and where we are left with, we have a barbell. On one side, we have these huge companies, J.P. Morgan, Blackstone, on that end, and that's where most of the capital is allocated. On the other end are companies that have very niche strategies that are able to execute and provide alpha, and you've gotta be on one end or the other. And so, and the reality is, I mean, with many institutional investors, you don't get fired allocating money to Blackstone. I mean, you just simply don't. And so there's a risk element there, which is commendable with companies like Nuvain and Prudential, that they do look and they make those investments in companies like ours. So that's one of the challenges, just the general consolidation of financial assets over time, same way in stocks and bonds and the like. Hi, everyone, I have a question. My name is Bre Jones. I'm from Baltimore, so it's really exciting to see Baltimore repping all the way out here in San Francisco and looking forward to our meeting later today. So I am the founder of Parity. Parity is, well, I call myself an equitable developer. I am working on closing the wealth disparity by renovating abandoned buildings in Baltimore to create affordable home ownership opportunities, centering Black and brown people. And so my question is, when it comes to kind of increasing diversity in the real estate space, we've talked a little bit about hiring at the institutional level and top down approaches to diversity, do you guys do any mentorship or incubation of new developers like myself? And I ask that because I meet a lot of white men in this field who are oftentimes more than happy to take me under their wing and show me the ropes and sit on my board, the jubilees of the world or the Southwest partnerships of the world. But sometimes when I meet Black folks in the industry, it's a little bit more difficult. And so I just am curious what you guys do on a personal level to show the ropes to people coming up behind you. And I'll put it out there. I am recruiting for my board. And so if anyone is interested in taking a board position, I'm available, so thank you. Yes, preferably you guys, but also in your organization. Well, I would comment first that it's great that you've attracted mentorship of someone who is qualified in the industry. We take on, we probably have seven ventures with smaller minority developers, one of which is a very incredibly talented African-American woman in Charlotte. I think you met Dion Nelson, whose company they've developed 25 affordable communities. So we're in partnership with her company. So it's something that we do and part of it, it expands our capacity in markets that maybe like we have a property in the Raleigh-Durham area, we don't have, she has great resources there and rather than us build them there, we'd rather partner with her. And so yes, we do that. But more importantly, I think it's, we look also, we partner with community organizations. Half of our residents are Section 8 voucher holders. And despite whatever you hear out of Washington, they all work, I mean 96% of them work. A third of them are two incomes. And what it means is that many of our family communities, kids come home from school to empty households. And so we've partnered with community organizations and nonprofits to do after-school programs in a lot of our communities. So our view is our investment strategy is not just brick and mortar, it's very holistic and inclusive. We have done that. I think the issue for us, it has to do with scale. We can't invest in small deals because just the size of our organization and where we are, so that becomes a challenge. I think you and I have actually even spoken. And you're not from Baltimore, but you moved to Baltimore to help. And for those of you who are not from Baltimore, we want anyone who's interested in coming to Baltimore who wants to invest. We want you to come on down, I think here. But I think, so we have done that with larger scale projects. We do something we call it a co-GP. So you'll get someone who has an interesting project with some scale to it, but doesn't have the ability to, because the institutions will provide equity, but they won't guarantee debt or guarantee completion costs typically. So the sponsor has to provide that. And then the institutions also want to know that there's a platform. So with smaller developers and not just all minorities with everyone, we've done this co-GP format where you come in with the project, we put up the sponsor equity and then we'll bring one of our larger limited partners in to get the deal done. So for us as a fund or impact investor, we are actually looking at strategies to support smaller developers. So one of our initial investments was in the Harbor Bank CDC program. The main reason we did it, oh for those in the Harbor Bank of Maryland is the Black Ombank in Baltimore. The reason why we elected to do that because of their emerging developer program. So we put capital in partnership with JPMorgan Chase to support that effort. In my previous role at the Cali Foundation, we invested in capital impact partners, a strong CDFI. They have a developers program both in Detroit and thinking also in California and Oakland as well. And so in my role, I'm always looking for strategies to try to support developers of color and through our investment strategies. I talk to people all the time. So we can chat and I can consult and mentor. I'm happy to do that. I do that all the time. I help people call me all the time about term sheets and what are the right terms. And I'm looking to work with this institutional partner. And so I'm happy to chat. Hi, I'm Lori Gibbs-Harris and I spent probably 25, almost 30 years at in commercial real estate, Northwestern Mutual, Travelers, Equitable on the transaction side as opposed to in asset management and came in really thinking that loving real estate what's not to love, loving commercial real estate. And this is sort of just a, I've been out of real estate now, commercial real estate for 10 years and I'll get to that. But structurally, the lack of mentorship internally, the lack of support and cultivation, the way, and I'm Darrell's generation. So black developers were just beginning and that was a more natural progression for blacks who were interested in commercial real estate was to go into affordable housing development because the prudential travelers Northwestern, the mass mutual weren't as friendly or didn't have black folks there. And then when we were there, we were not cultivated. We were basically, you know, who got the big portfolios who when somebody went through attrition, how portfolios were handed down, I would say the saving grace for me was my confidence, but also I had the money. So yes, I have the power to call up anybody I want because as a lender, I've got the money and there's equal opportunity to that extent that you're willing to leverage the fact that you have money, that you represent the money. But that doesn't negate the fact that it is something of a closed system. The guys all talk to each other. The mortgage bankers bring their deals to the guy who has done the most deals because that's who's gonna get their deal done. So spent a lot of 30 years in that industry. Would love to talk about connections with the historically black colleges and cultivating a track for the institutional side of commercial real estate and not asset management. I'm sorry, I think that being on the transactional side is the lucrative side, that's where you get paid. There is a consequence of all of this consolidation in commercial real estate and the development and the rampant development and that's the field that I've moved into is the displacement and the lack of reinvestment of capital, of jobs, of resources back into our communities as a result of the really aggressive development and of communities like Oakland, San Francisco. At Northwestern, I spearheaded a socially responsible initiative and so I know that there within the insurance companies there is money for doing something other than new market tax credit deals and so how can those of us who are trying to uplift entrepreneurship actually start to access that some of that huge amounts of capital that is embedded in the real estate industry that cities like Oakland have made concessions for you to bring the development in, whether it's retail, entrepreneur development, whether it's mostly I'm interested in the entrepreneur development so I wanted to state my bona fides with respect to the industry but now I'm advocating and asking how does the industry, particularly the institutional side, start to give some money back to the community? I would just start off with that capital attracts, I mean, number one, there's a ton of capital out there and sometimes we think that when a couple of doors aren't open that there isn't but there is a lot of capital out there and one of the things that I have found today as part of us attracting capital, believe it or not, the biggest thing that institutional investors, I mean, certainly the quality of the projects on the team but building the back room in the compliance area is huge. Both Reuben and Pam are in the impact space. We do a lot of reporting on things, our reporting regimen is intense and we really built our, I've learned from building one company and starting the second, the most important thing in attracting capital is the back room. I mean, at the end of the day I always like to say, I always wanted to go into a meeting and say, look, we're no smarter than anyone else. We're gonna generate market returns and we're not gonna steal the money. I mean, I'd always like to say that but we never do that but the point is having a robust back room and building the compliance aspect is the most important in terms of attracting capital and the one thing I would say is recently, about three years ago, because it was so hard raising money here we decided to go and potentially raise money in Europe. And our latest fund, which will be around $600 million, we will have a third of the capital from European investors. One of the things that we learned about European investors when it talks about affordable and workforce housing, they are huge investors of that in countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, the UK. And so they don't necessarily, I mean, candidly US investors, when you say section eight housing, they run away. And I remember going to one investor in an unnamed city, I don't wanna offend anyone, but it's a state capital somewhere in the Midwest and they were saying, well, after we made, there's probably a $50 billion pension fund and they said, well, we don't wanna invest in any of that, that's yucky. And I was like, have you seen this city and all the mobile home parks that are falling apart? Nothing looks like that that we invest in but the point is this, that there is lots of capital out there but increasingly today, the compliance and it's probably the hardest thing about the financial, a lot of the things after the downturn is that, things like Dodd-Frank, the Volcker rule, we've had to learn to navigate them. Probably more important to navigate that today than the actual investment side. So I would just say, keep patient, there's lots of capital out there but you have to be structured to manage all the compliance and reporting. I just wanna say one of the real, one of the difficult things is the deals are really hard. I mean, we have to, deals are hard when you're trying to do impact deals in impacted communities because the math doesn't always work out. When you're doing affordable housing, there's lots of pathways to the financing. It's a very sort of oh, I got this, I got this, I can put these things together. Here's the capital stack but if you're trying to do other kinds of projects, it is extremely difficult and it's not for the faint of heart and it takes a long time and a ton of capital and the idea that you could, that we, that you're gonna be able to do it without pulling together lots of different capital and I see you nodding because I think you understand what I'm talking about. The deals we want to do, the deals that are gonna be the most impactful in our communities, the math doesn't work without something else. So you need an investor who has an impact point of view who's willing to say, okay, for this particular transaction, I see that you're gonna bring jobs or whatever the situation is to this area and we're willing to sort of look past the 16 IRR, we typically want for development and we'll take a lower yield because we believe in what you're doing and the challenge with that is, there's a bunch of challenges. One is you have to, when you show up and you say, hey, I wanna do this $20 million deal, you have to be set up to do a $20 million deal. So they wanna see, show me and even impact investors, I mean, they're not just gonna say, oh, it's a good deal but who's the operator? Where's your accounting? How does this work? How does that work? So we have these structural challenges of a very hard deal and then you have to have a company with enough of a track record and back office and all the other pieces who the investors believe, not that you'll steal the money but that you, right, exactly, that you won't lose the money or the deal, but the reality is and I think it's important for everyone in this room to realize is that if you can't figure out how to make the math work, none of these deals will happen. The math has to work and you gotta be able to get some money from Casey and cobble it together with the money from this and the money from that, some new markets tax credits and all that, if you're not doing affordable housing, which I think has a very clear pathway to financing most of the time and you're talking about mixed use or anything, office or retail or medical or anything like that, it is hard and time consuming. It takes a lot of upfront capital before the deal's even ready to accept capital from another investor and that's the reality of it but it's super important and if you have the fortitude and you're willing to do it, there are definitely ways to pull it together and it can be done and when you're finished and you look up, you're like, holy crap, we actually changed this whole area and that's totally doable. So I'm curious from... Yeah, Pam, you wanna go ahead and... Yeah, I assume you were gonna say that you have similar limitations that we do and that, you know, it's... I actually seek relationships with local developers and partners. We want to grow them. We have a limitation on the minimum capital that we can put out, which is $10 million. And so when you're looking at that number and you're working with an entrepreneur or a newer developer, they need $2 million in equity or $3 million in equity. I can't do that deal because it takes me as much time and effort to put out $10 million as it does, $3 million. The next thing I look at is pipeline. How much pipeline are you gonna... I have to put out capital. I get a capital allocation. It's a good problem to have. I get a capital allocation every year. That money has to go out. And so when I look at, should I do... Even should I do a $10 million deal or this $25 million deal? The $25 million deal is normally the one that I'll work on. And so I look for... The next $25 million of equity. Equity, in equity. And that's the issue, right? So I need someone with a pipeline. And if I can prove out a pipeline, then I will do a smaller deal, if we can say. The other issue that we run into in looking for partners is even in the affordable housing sector. And by the way, we believe impact drives value that we don't have to give up return for that. But the other thing that we look for is are they aligned with our mission? And so when I talked to Darrell about investing in his fund, he says the right things to me. I don't know what you say to the other investors. I assume it's the same. But he talks about the mission and we're mission-based. And sometimes with the early developers, they're just focused on the return and the deal so much that I can't even get to, are we really aligned in our mission for even in affordable housing where you think there's natural impact. They're still focused on return and capital. And it doesn't come across for us in the right way. Yeah, I'll only add to that. And I think we have to wrap up, unfortunately. But I would just say one of the things that helps me get into a relationship with a new development partner or new entity that I've never worked with before is someone who can serve as a strong local reference that they can point me to. So, as you're building that business, you should be figuring out who are the people in your market, even if they're mortgage lenders or they're brokers who work for large brokerages, those kinds of people who, from a relationship standpoint, can speak credibly about your abilities and get to know you before you have to introduce yourself to me. Because like Pam, I'm gonna give you, I'll give you an hour of my time for an initial call and maybe I'll spend a few hours following up to figure out whether or not the deal works. And then that's it. Then I've gotta move on. I gotta do something else if it's not gonna work. And so, the quicker you can point me to someone who can say, oh yeah, so-and-so has been here in Memphis or San Antonio or wherever for the last 10 years and yeah, I realize this is a step forward for them, but they seem like they're ready to do that. They're credible, they're honest, they're not gonna steal the money. You know, that does really help. I mean, and in so far as this is a relationship business, like if you've got a relationship you can put on the table, that's great. And you know, my challenge, of course, is to people who are doing economic development locally, like figure out how to give those relationships to people, like bring those people into that community of conversation so that Prudential, who doesn't know them from Adam, can have that discussion. Well, speaking of having discussions, this was great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Please join me in thanking the panel. I really appreciate it. Thank you so all so much for your time.