As the daughter of the chief executive of Avison Young, and a vice president at the privately held real estate brokerage her father started leading in 2008, Marissa Rose has had a front-row seat to observing how women have advanced in the business.
Surrounded by real estate talk for much of her life, Marissa Rose joined the industry in 2012 and has become a vice president in the capital markets group for development and retail in the Chicago office at the Toronto-based brokerage with 5,500 global employees.
"I was just exposed so much to real estate because of what dad did. I knew at seven or eight years old I wanted to be in commercial real estate," she said during an interview with CoStar News that included her father, Mark Rose.
Her father cultivated her interest in real estate during her time in high school and college, she said.
"He made sure to give me opportunities to understand the language and expose me to different people and challenges in the industry until the day I entered it myself," she said.
Mark Rose, who has been in the industry for 39 years, has made diversity a priority at Avison Young. When he took the helm of the company in 2008, he made a move to make the brokerage more diverse but realized a few years later after being approached by a woman at an annual meeting of the company that the firm's board was comprised of eight white men. That woman was Marissa Rose. It was in 2011, years before she joined Avison Young, and she was just offering a daughterly observation to her father.
Twelve years later, Avison Young's board is now made up of 50% women and/or non-white members, with 47% of its U.S. executive committee being women. And 38% of the brokerage's global executive team are women and/or non-white. About 40% of all its global employees are women.
"I think we have made great strides, but there are elements of things that need to happen to make the next leap," Mark Rose said. "Sometimes we forget this is not a revolution but an evolution, but inside that, you need to be intentional."
Women make up 36.7% of the commercial property industry across Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, according to a 2020 survey conducted by CREW Network, a global organization that seeks to advance women in commercial real estate. But that percentage has not changed much over the past 15 years, CREW said.
Still, more women occupy brokerage positions than ever before at 29%, which is a 6 percentage point increase from 2015, according to the CREW study. And more women are aspiring to the C-suite at 32%, up 4 percentage points from 2015.
"It's never about quotas because quotas focus people on numbers, and what happens when they feel like they have to deliver on a number, it won't be the right people, and it won't be sustainable," said the senior Rose. He adds that the real estate industry doesn't spend enough time thinking about getting people who have disabilities into the industry.
Pending Change
As chair of the board and CEO of Avison Young, which has more than 100 offices around the world, Mark Rose has been in his fair share of meetings, which he said are often still dominated by older white males.
"They are not ready to step down just yet, but this will change in short order," he said, noting it will be a natural process.
Mark Rose, who works out of the firm's office in Toronto, Chicago, Florida and London, said he expects the modernization of real estate technology through robotics, artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to bring in top talent from all walks of life.
"There will be fewer people in some [real estate] services we have, but there will ultimately be more people in our industry, but they will look different, sound different, dress different and be different," said the chief executive. "This will make us so much better."
Marissa Rose agrees with her father that advancing technology will cater to advancing the careers of different types of people. "That will be huge for all people of different backgrounds, particularly women."
To get more women into the industry, she said the expectation that you need an extroverted and big personality to succeed in commercial real estate needs to change.
"That personality matched well with the white male demographic. It was confident," she said.
The issue of gender diversity in particular is more in the spotlight this month surrounding the marking of International Women's Day. And while on one hand, Marissa Rose represents Avison Young's push toward gender diversity, the senior Rose is well aware that she's family.
Having a child in the same company is a challenge the CEO readily acknowledges and tries his best to tackle head-on.
"There is inherent nervousness around her because she is the CEO's daughter," said Mark Rose. "I will mentor her at home, but there is a lot of discipline that I cannot get involved in anything related to her. I leave her on her own and as any dad, there are days where your heart breaks" with any setback.
Marissa Rose started her real estate career at Cushman & Wakefield and later earned an MBA from Northwestern University. She joined Avison Young in 2013 as an analyst and has risen through the ranks, becoming vice president in 2020.
"I started my career at another large commercial Realtor doing industrial property management in their suburban Chicago office and, in time, realized the role was not the right fit for my personality and skill set," said Marissa Rose. "I reached out to Avison Young’s managing director at the time to ask if there were any junior-level roles available. He told me about two open roles: one as the national analyst for the U.S. capital markets group or an associate on the agency leasing team that they were in the process of forming. I interviewed with the Chicago-based capital markets leaders. The rest is history."
Marissa Rose agrees she has had to navigate with care her relationship with her father over the past decade.
"It was definitely very difficult at the beginning as we were both still learning to manage the dynamic at the same time I was learning to be a working professional. While we have remained very separate regarding our roles at the company, it has definitely been and continued to be an evolving lesson to learn, particularly on my part as I grow in the industry. It’s become a lot easier as we’ve grown accustomed to the dynamic, and I’ve had time to demonstrate my skill set and earn credibility independent of who my father is, but it is still an ever-present challenge in our lives," she said.
Whenever Marissa Rose has any issues, she makes sure to go through the proper channels to solve them and seldom brings them up to her dad, she said.
"When I’m really stuck on an issue and want his advice, I always ask him to take off his 'CEO' hat and put on his 'dad' hat at the start of the conversation. He makes a point to give me advice on how to handle the situation or who to speak with rather than repairing the situation for me. It’s a delicate balance that has challenged our relationship in many ways over the past 10 years but at the same time, has made our bond so much stronger."
Diverse Talent
A 2022 study from Ferguson Partners found only 11.8% of women were in leadership positions at REITs on the S&P 500, compared with 28% for the S&P 500 overall. And 5.9% of minorities were in leadership positions at S&P 500 REITs versus 19% for the overall S&P 500.
The group also looked at REIT boards and found those in the top 50% ranked by diversity have outperformed REIT boards in the bottom 50% in terms of diversity, with the five-year return for boards in the top 50% of diversity averaging 26.6% — versus 2.7% for the bottom 50% in board diversity.
"You have to understand companies are better when there is a diversity of opinion," Mark Rose said. "You get that when you bring in diverse talent."
For example, the CEO cites the company's recent hire for U.S. operations and board member, Juan Bueno.
"The first thing we did was hire a search firm where the talent at the search firm was diverse. We said we wanted the most talented. If they happened to be white men, fine. But we told them we wanted them to contact all sorts of people, some who may not have even been in our industry," Mark Rose said. He added that 250 people were contacted before a short list of six and then hiring Bueno, who previously served as vice president of sales at the Home Depot.
The younger Rose said the most significant thing those in the industry can do to support women is by mentoring and helping them grow.
"One of the key things that has happened is women have learned to support other women in a traditionally male-dominated industry," she said. "One of the biggest things we have also learned is the necessity for male allies and support."