On the brink of the last recession, after the dot com bust and before
the 9/11 attacks--Joe O'Connor, the new chairman at the Urban Land
Institute made inclusivity his cause for his two-year tenure.
Appointing a task group to identify the most effective means of engaging greater numbers of public officials, women, minorities, and young professionals, Joe gave us permission to get serious about diversity. Despite the downturn, membership doubled.
Thanks to Joe, ULI stepped up to support a new initiative, the Real Estate Association Program (REAP), with an annual $25,000 grant and an equal amount in administrative, in-kind and staff support. Funding continues today.
That was the beginning of my association with REAP, working with the founder, Mike Bush, to build a new talent network of career-changing minority professionals. REAP is funded by dozens of companies and a number of commercial real estate associations, chief among them ICSC--the International Council of Shopping Centers--led by Mike Kercheval.
The story of this industry-wide program appears in the 2009 edition of Association Now's Volunteer Leadership Issue. With permission, a pdf of the article Breaking Through is available to download at REAP's web site, projectreap.org.
By sharing responsibility across all segments of the business, pooling the efforts of many associations and a variety of employers, we all escaped from those well meaning, but lame, feel-good programs and shared the heavy lifting of creating genuine opportunity. The real winners are the REAP associates who gained the widest perspective to find the best fit for their interests and abilities.
The quest now, in the face of the current recession, is to build capacity, transition beyond the founder to a new exec, and establish vibrant local networks in five cities. Crazy timing, but when you are in it for the long haul, economic cycles smooth out.
