Women make up about 36.7% of commercial real estate professionals but hold just 9% of C-suite positions, according to the latest study by the Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) Network. Women also face a substantial wage gap; they earn 10% less than men in base salaries, and the gap is wider for Asian women (14%), Black women (15%), and Hispanic/Latinx women (20%). The 2020 figures show that little progress has been made in the past decade, and there’s much more work to do for women to achieve parity.
However, the “2020 CREW Network Benchmark Study: Gender and Diversity in Commercial Real Estate,” conducted in partnership with the MIT Center for Real Estate, also signals the needle is moving. The study saw a 5.4% increase in women respondents 39 years and younger, indicating a growing generation of young and emerging female professionals in the industry. In addition, more women (32%) are aspiring to the C-suite, a 4% increase from 2015, and more women occupy brokerage positions than ever before (29%), a 6% increase from 2015.
To raise the visibility of women in the multifamily industry—from property management and investment to finance and policy—Multifamily Executive is highlighting 10 leaders who are making a difference.
Laurie Baker
After graduating from Sam Houston State University with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, Laurie Baker started her career in medical research at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. While she was in the Washington, D.C., area, she went on to pursue her master’s degree in finance and investment at George Washington University and decided to move into the investment group at the nonprofit medical institution.
It wasn’t until Baker had her first child did she decide to move back to her hometown of Houston, where a family connection brought her into the multifamily industry. She often states “the multifamily industry allowed me to come back home.”
Baker spent her first few years in the industry at Walden Residential Properties and eventually discovered nearby Camden Property Trust.
“It was a great place for me to take the skills I had from my nine years working for Howard Hughes and my five years in multifamily,” says Baker. “I kind of grew up, even though I came in late, at a time that the industry was becoming much more sophisticated and a really vital platform for capital dollars.”
Today, she celebrates over 20 years with the company, which has 165 communities and 56,300-plus apartment homes across the U.S., and serves as the executive vice president of operations, where she is responsible for the oversight and strategy of Camden’s portfolio operations and investment funds.
During her career, Baker has served as the executive sponsor for Camden’s technology initiative, which included the rollout of web-based property management software, revenue management strategies, and several web-based solutions. She’s also held other positions including senior vice president of fund and asset management, where she led the creation and management of Camden’s first investment funds.
“I’m very fortunate that I ended up at a company where culture is a priority,” continues Baker. “It’s been a fun environment, and very rewarding, to be able to not just contribute internally, but contribute to the industry overall.”
Outside of Camden, Baker serves on the Executive Committee for the National Multifamily Housing Council and is vice chair of ULI’s Multifamily Bronze Council. Previously, she was the 2016 president of CREW (Commercial Real Estate Women) Network, a past president for CREW Houston, and has been honored in the state of Texas as a top woman in commercial real estate.
Diane Batayeh
When she was accepted to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Diane Batayeh recalls that she vacillated about going. As one of seven children of Middle Eastern immigrants in southwest Detroit, she worried about what her parents wound think. “Moving out of the house before you were married? It was unheard of,” she says.
When she shared her concerns with her first mentor—LeRoy Rowley, her band teacher—his response was one she would remember for the rest of her life: “What the hell are you thinking? Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Get out, you have to go.”
Now, as CEO of Village Green, Batayeh carries these words as her mantra and shares them with young people in her organization. “Be brave,” she says, “you will never regret that.”
Batayeh began her career at Village Green in 1980 as a part-time sales consultant in the building where she lived while attending the University of Michigan and worked her way up through the management company before expanding into positions in the other operating companies. Over 40 years with Village Green, she has worked in a wide variety of positions: sales, management operations, marketing, acquisitions, dispositions, development, market research, finance, and construction. This culminated in her appointment as chief operating officer in 2011, president and chief operating officer in 2014, and CEO in 2017.
When COVID-19 hit, the third-party manager already had the infrastructure in place to pivot entirely to virtual operations. Over the first six months of the pandemic, Batayeh met daily with a task force of 22 stakeholders, tweaking the company’s response and making sure the needs of residents, associates, partners, and owners were all met. “The key from day one was being proactive, total transparency, [and] leading with empathy,” she says.
Moving forward, Batayeh aims to keep improving the company’s technological advancement, with the goal of “raising the bar” on sustainability and value profitability.
To this end, the company has formed a committee focused on vetting new tech products to determine whether they would benefit the company before they are ultimately adopted. “We want people to be proud to work at Village Green, to be affiliated with Village Green, and that’s my key goal,” Batayeh says. “It’s easy to say, hard to achieve. We’re just trying to be aware of what’s out there.”
Cindy Vosper Chetti
Cindy Vosper Chetti first “caught the political bug,” in her words, as an intern on Capitol Hill while attending Virginia Tech. She worked with various legislators before settling into a position as a legislative assistant to Congresswoman Marge Roukema (R-N.J.), rising from there to chief of staff.
“I loved working in a personnel office,” says Chetti, now senior vice president for government affairs at the National Multifamily Housing Council, “because I really had an opportunity to get a view of almost all the issues that Congress deals with.”
She found her niche in housing policy and served for six years on the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit. Following this, she spent 10 years as the lead housing policy expert for the House Financial Services Committee, working on the senior professional staff for the committee’s Republicans.
Chetti joined NMHC in 2011, with the goal of helping lawmakers understand the needs and workings of the multifamily industry. She is responsible for implementing strategy around regulatory and legislative issues for the NMHC and National Apartment Association’s Joint Legislative Program.
“I have long-standing relationships on either side of the aisle, I have written legislation and orchestrated legislation moving through the House and the Senate. I understand how Capitol Hill works, and that puts me in a position to help NMHC when we’re looking at important issues that impact the industry. So I think that’s been an asset—my relationships and my strong understanding of the logistics and the process.”
When COVID-19 hit, Chetti recalls that the NMHC had to “take a step back” and reevaluate its strategies. In-person meetings with legislative staff were no longer possible, and securing rental assistance and determining the impact of eviction moratoriums became top priorities. “It required a complete shift in how we conducted business,” she says, noting that her team is now working “10 times” as hard to accommodate the shift.
Moving forward, Chetti aims to continue to educate policymakers on the needs and importance of the industry—“not just to individuals, but to the economy and to communities.” She anticipates affordable housing will be a strong focus, particularly this next year, as work continues to find solutions for the industry and communities alike.
Michele Evans
Michele Evans has been in the multifamily finance business for over 30 years and has served in different roles at Fannie Mae since 1992. In August, she took over as head of multifamily and executive vice president.
For much of her time at Fannie Mae, she had been on the production side, working closely with the Delegated Underwriting and Servicing (DUS) lenders. She also was on the team that built and managed the small loan lending platform for multifamily.
But a decade ago, just after Fannie Mae went into conservatorship, she was promoted to senior vice president and chief operating officer of Fannie Mae Multifamily, which allowed her to get an enterprise view of the organization.
“It gave me an opportunity to think about the whole experience behind the scenes and take that transactional rigor you put into a deal and decide what I wanted to get done,” she says. “To me that was really pivotal because it further advanced my background beyond just doing deals, and it served me well.”
One of her biggest accomplishments during that time, she says, was engineering Fannie Mae’s multifamily digital transformation.
“We have been on an eight-year journey to transform the technology used when a loan is first underwritten to when it gets paid off. At the core, we have retooled our infrastructure with an eye toward improving how to do business more efficiently and quickly, and how to use data in ways to ensure solid credit decisions are made in the quickest possible way.”
This investment paid off over the past year during the COVID-19 pandemic. “If we hadn’t done what we did, it would have been difficult to do $76 billion in business last year.”
After the record-breaking year, Evans says Fannie Mae Multifamily will be focused on its mission in 2021. It has a $70 billion cap, with at least 50% of the business being mission-driven affordable housing, defined as affordable for residents at or below 80% of the area median income. She says priorities include providing liquidity in a safe, stable, and affordable way; keeping the DUS platform healthy; continuing the digital transformation; serving renters; having the right staff for the future; and advancing diversity and inclusion externally and internally.
“I love the tangible nature of real estate, and I lean in pretty heavily to the mission side. I come to work every day realizing that I’m not only doing my job, I’m helping support much needed housing for working families.”
Debby Jenkins
Debby Jenkins took a risk to relocate her family in 2008—in the middle of a financial crisis—to join Freddie Mac, and it paid off. She came to the government-sponsored enterprise to start the underwriting and credit platform now known as the K Deal and a decade later took over as executive vice president and head of Freddie Mac Multifamily.
“Who knew a kid from Detroit in 2008 was going to end up in this role a decade after coming in,” she says. “It’s not just the leadership, it’s about the mission—what we do on a daily basis that separates us from other commercial real estate players. Freddie Mac’s mission is grounded in a commitment to doing everything we can do to keep housing and rental housing affordable.”
Jenkins credits her background—growing up in a blue-collar town just outside Detroit’s city limits and being a high school and college athlete—for teaching her the grit, perseverance, and competitive spirit needed to succeed in the business.
“I really believe that has had a big impact on myself,” she says. “Coming from an athletic background provides the competitiveness, learning to play as a team, and losing gracefully. It helps make you a more rounded leader, especially in the evolving times that we live in today.”
Freddie Mac Multifamily is coming off a record year, providing $82.5 billion in loan purchase and guarantee volume. New this year is a $70 billion cap, with at least 50% of the business being mission-driven affordable housing, defined as affordable for residents at or below 80% of the area median income.
“We have different mission goals, and we feel pretty confident that we are going to be able to hit those goals and manage the cap,” she says. “It is about optimizing the deployment of $70 billion of debt capital over the course of the year to maintain our liquidity. We also are looking at making sound credit and risk decisions while bringing forward some of the technology and the lessons we have learned from the past year.”
Jenkins says Freddie Mac also will be using the breadth of its platform to address the persistent racial inequity that has occurred for years and help create a more equitable multifamily industry.
“We’ve got an opportunity here to do something. If we do it correctly with our partners in the industry, Freddie Mac can make a difference,” she says. “It’s not only an opportunity, but an obligation.”
Tammy Jones
Over 25 years in commercial real estate, each of the roles Tammy Jones has held has prepared her for the ultimate one—leading her own investment and lending platform. She learned the ropes at Equitable Real Estate, GMAC, and CWCapital and got her master’s in real estate finance at night while working full time. In 2009, she took the leap to start her own company.
“I have been investing and lending on commercial real estate assets for institutions for my entire career,” she says. “My final and biggest pivotal moment was having the courage to go out on my own and follow my entrepreneurial spirit to start my own platform 12 years ago.”
A certified minority and woman-owned business, Basis Investment Group is a multi-strategy commercial real estate investment platform that Jones founded with JEMB Realty Corp. In addition, she was the first African-American woman to get a Freddie Mac seller-servicer agency license.
“I have been told that I am one of the only African-American female owners of a diversified commercial real estate and multifamily investment platform in the country,” says Jones, who is co-founder and CEO. “With a thoughtful strategy to build our track record, we have finally been able to scale and create a national platform. Our commitment to diversity is in our DNA—not only is our team comprised of 78% women and minorities, we have also invested and loaned more than $800 million with other MWOB commercial real estate firms. I truly believe that diversity is our secret sauce to outperformance.”
Since its founding, Basis Investment Group has closed nearly $4 billion in commercial real estate and multifamily debt and structured equity, including deploying about $1.5 billion in equity. The firm invests and lends in the middle market on all property types, including office, industrial, and multifamily with a focus on workforce housing, which is a priority for Jones.
“For me, investing and lending in multifamily assets is personal. I grew up in affordable and workforce housing,” she says. “We have an affordability crisis in housing in America right now, and COVID has exacerbated that problem. There wasn’t a lot of development in workforce housing following the great financial crisis, and now we have a pipeline that’s more anemic than ever.”
She says Basis is committed to getting capital to investors that develop or own workforce housing. “It has been very rewarding to me to have an impact and to get capital into the sector, while also trying to ensure that this capital allocation is inclusive of women and people of color.”
Jones is passionate about making the real estate industry more diverse. She is the first chair of the Real Estate Executive Council, an organization for African-American and Latino commercial real estate and multifamily executives. She created Basis Impact Group Foundation to inspire the next generation of minorities and women in commercial real estate by exposing underrepresented youth to the career and wealth building opportunities that exist in the industry. She also has been involved with bringing trade organizations and CEOs together as well as working with private companies and public REITs to diversify their boards. Last year, she joined the board of directors of office and multifamily REIT Mack-Cali Realty Corp.
“It has to be a multifaceted approach that focuses not just on hiring, but also on wealth creation,” Jones says. “None of us can do this alone. Like my fellow Cornell alum Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, ‘real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.’”
Ella Neyland
While growing up in rental housing in Baltimore and Frederick, Maryland, Steadfast Apartment REIT president and chief financial officer Ella Neyland recalls that she could always tell whether her single mother had a good or bad landlord by the stress on her face when she came home from work. “That was really what got me into the apartment industry, understanding how it affects your life, where you live, and how people take care of you,” she says. “In particular, when I came to Steadfast, the culture was such that we really never lost sight of the fact that these apartments are these people’s homes.”
Neyland has worked with apartments for her entire career, starting at an investment bank and moving on to hold positions at commercial banks, publicly traded REITs, and apartment developers, including executive roles at UDR, Lincoln Property Co., and CIBC. She joined Steadfast in fall 2012, served as president for all three Steadfast-sponsored REITs, and was named president and CFO when STAR was internalized on Sept. 1, 2020.
In an executive meeting just before the start of the pandemic, Neyland recalls emphasizing to her colleagues that “your apartment home is like your sanctuary.”
With this statement now more true than ever, Neyland has trained her focus on the well-being of the people in her organization—both the comfort of the residents and the camaraderie and morale of her employees working from home.
Over the course of the past year, Neyland says she has done more one-on-one conversations than she has in her entire career—15 to 30 minutes with up to 45 people a week. She encouraged employees to stick with a routine, and make time to care for themselves and for family. During this time, work never once suffered. “We have a set of core values, and one of our values is people,” Neyland says. “You have to have that camaraderie and team effort,
people caring about each other, to get through the tough times.”
This, more than anything, has convinced Neyland of the importance of a strong company culture—especially in times to come. “I believe that the ability for people to have a great community that’s well maintained and well located, a great community for them to call home, and the ability to have a rent check that lines up with your paycheck are going to be increasingly more important.”
Donna Summers
Growing up in a small town, Donna Summers always envisioned herself as a nurse, due to her mother’s role in the field, but when she interviewed for a part-time job as a leasing consultant, she inadvertently jump-started her career in the multifamily industry.
“The regional manager at the time asked me where I wanted to be in five years, so I looked at him and said, ‘I want your job,’ ” says Summers. “He then not only gave me the job, but gave me the assistant manager job. From that point, I just continued to move up until I’m in the position I’m in today.”
From the initial assistant manager position, Summers spent 11 years in a variety of operational roles with Gables Residential. Upon leaving Gables, she worked for companies such as Archstone and Greystar in various positions operating product for both owned and third-party clients. But in 2005, she decided to return to the company where it all began.
“I tell everyone coming back to Gables was like coming home because I started my career here,” she states. “Gables has such a long history and so many great roots, particularly with women, so coming back was really comforting.”
Today, Summers has over 34 years of experience in the property management industry, with 26 of those years with Gables.
In 2020, the company promoted Summers to president of Gables Management, where she leads the operations and handles additional responsibilities to grow the portfolio and drive operational performance. Before her promotion, Summers was a senior vice president of operations and managed day-to-day operations and revenue management for the Gables-owned, joint-venture, and third-party portfolios.
“I think being with a company as long as I have and being able to reach the levels I’ve been able to reach, given that I was a girl from a small town, has really meant a lot to me,” says Summers. “The multifamily industry and my career have treated me very well. I have always loved it because there’s always a different challenge and you do something different every day.”
Summers also holds her CPM certification, is an active member of the Institute of Real Estate Management, and has served on the board of directors and legislative committee for the Apartment Association of Greater Dallas.
Michelle Wells
With the intention to be a teacher, Michelle Wells studied English literature at the University of California, San Diego for her bachelor’s degree and pursued education at the University of California, Santa Barbara for her master’s degree.
“I got my first office job just to pay off my student loans, with a plan to go back to teaching,” says Wells. “It was December 1999, and I moved up to San Francisco. I ended up getting a job—certainly above my education background—as a due diligence coordinator and admin for the acquisitions group of AMB.”
While Wells was at AMB Property Corp., now known as Prologis, she fell in love with real estate, the excitement of the deals, and the relationships. She went on to work for other companies, such as AIG Global Real Estate, The Praedium Group, and RREEF, before she joined Waterton in 2013.
Today, Wells serves as the executive vice president of investor relations at Waterton. In this role, she is responsible for fund strategy development and capital raising and oversees ongoing investor and consultant relations, marketing, and internal and external communications.
In February, the company closed its Waterton Residential Property Venture XIV fund with $1.5 billion of equity commitments. Wells led the fundraising effort, which was labeled as one of the largest dedicated multifamily value-add funds in the U.S.
“It feels good to have raised that,” she says. “We are seeing some disruption to pricing here and there, and it’s great to have that kind of buying power as we work through the COVID movement.”
Outside of her traditional job duties, Wells is the founder and chair of Waterton Women, an internal group that meets quarterly for both professional and personal development. She also participates on the firm’s investment and culture committees and is the chair of its management committee.
Wells also has served on the Women in Real Estate’s board, an organization dedicated to providing a networking venue for women in the private equity real estate business, in both San Francisco and Chicago, and was a mentor for the Goldie Initiative, another organization dedicated to women in the commercial real estate industry.
Stephanie Williams
With an undergraduate degree in community planning from the University of Washington and a master’s in urban planning from the University of Maryland, College Park, Stephanie Williams always thought she would work as a municipal planner. However, that vision shifted at the start of her career.
“I have always been very intrigued by the relationship between people and the built environment,” she says.
With a focus on urban planning and affordable housing in graduate school, she worked for Prince George’s County Department of Housing & Community Development as a graduate intern and then went on to the Maryland Department of Housing & Community Development. There, she had the opportunity to work on an affordable housing commission created by Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich and was part of a subgroup led by Tom Bozzuto, chairman and co-founder of The Bozzuto Group.
“My work in graduate school on affordable housing aligned nicely with the work Bozzuto was already doing,” she says. “I valued his perspective on the private sector’s participation in the preservation and creation of affordable housing. What he described energized me. I soon had aspirations for development work in the private sector where I, as well, could make a meaningful impact on individuals and families.”
A mentor connected Bozzuto with Williams, who was hired 90 days after her interview and has been there ever since.
She joined the company for a role in the development group in 2004 and then transitioned to the management company in 2008. In 2016, she became president of Bozzuto Management Co., one of the nation’s top property management firms.
Since taking the helm, she has grown the portfolio 60% from 50,000 units to 82,000 units with an estimated value of $26 billion. She helped the company expand to South Florida, where it is at 5,000 operating units with more than 2,000 units in the pipeline. And earlier this year, the company announced plans to expand operations to the West Coast.
“I see growth as a reward for delivering on our brand promise to create sanctuary for our clients, partners, and residents. Doing what we do well everyday has earned us the opportunity to expand nationally with a tremendous amount of support from our network of valued relationships. It’s a true honor,” she says.
In addition to the West Coast expansion, Williams says Bozzuto will be focused on developing its talent—a personification of its brand. It also will continue to analyze quantitative and qualitative data to drive its business as the needs of residents and employees evolve.
For Williams, the No. 1 reward for being part of the industry goes back to her interest in the relationships people have with space—having a hand in enhancing the communities where people live.
“The privilege of enhancing already rich communities and serving others is deeply rewarding,” she says. “Every day I’m inspired by my colleagues who care for and support one another, are committed to making the homes of our beloved residents their sanctuary, and endeavor to make this world a better, more inclusive place for all people. Leading them is one of my greatest blessings.”