Where Your CREW Foundation Donations Go, and Why You Should Keep Giving

 

In my short life so far, being the ripe age of 21, I have taken small risks that have changed my professional trajectory and allowed me to launch my career in ways I never thought possible. I have always followed my gut and it has led me to amazing places.

It is easiest to tell this story from the very beginning. Throughout my university degree, I always worked part time on the side to keep my life the way I like it – busy! In my second year of university I was eager to transfer my work ethic to the corporate environment and get an internship. Living through a recession in Calgary, with unemployment reaching 10.4% in 2019, I knew obtaining an internship out of my second year of university was going to be difficult. I applied to over 45 internships with personalized cover letters in any industry or position where I fit the criteria. To my surprise, I ended up interviewing for 3 of those 45 companies. Those three consisted of a national development bank, a financial institution and a commercial real estate brokerage. At the time, I had no idea what commercial real estate was or what that career would entail. My idea of real estate was selling houses to families and it never crossed my mind that there is also a sector that markets office space to investors and CEO’s.

Throughout my interview process with those three companies, I had the best conversations with the people from the commercial real estate brokerage. When it came time to decide, a position at a bank aligned with the career I thought I wanted, and they were offering over $10 more an hour (this makes a difference for a naive intern). It would have made the most sense to accept the higher offer in an industry I was familiar with but for some reason my gut was telling me that I needed to work in commercial real estate. The people I met in my interview process where incredible and my curiosity sparked. If nothing else, I wanted to accept the internship so I could learn about a new industry and how it operates.

Fast forward, I had been at the brokerage for all of three weeks before approaching my new boss to ask if he would be willing to let me stay on part-time after my internship. Either he was impressed with my tenacity, or he needed the administrative help, but either way he arranged the new position and I stayed for the following year and a half. I loved my experience at the brokerage and wouldn’t take it back for the world. It was my first introduction to an industry that I fell in love with and allowed me to discover a new passion.

After my great experience, I reached out to Jessica Abt, the Director of the Westman Centre for Real Estate Studies, on a whim. Through word of mouth, I heard that if I was considering a career in Real Estate, she was the person to talk to! She sold me on the industry and made me see that the best path forward for me was to switch my major out of the finance stream into the newly launched real estate program at University of Calgary. The Westman Centre allowed me to get a business degree while also concentrating in a field I had a growing passion for.

Switching my major was one of the best decisions I ever made. The combination of working in the industry while learning about it in school gave me multiple perspectives and I absorbed so much information. I also got a board position on the Real Estate Student Association and made some of my closest friends within the program.

At this point, I am 19 years old and took two “risks” that have now proven to have changed my life. The first was accepting the low-paying internship in an industry I was unfamiliar with, and the second was switching my majoring from a “secure” and “stable” background in finance, to a brand new program that was very specific and could potentially pigeon-hole my career. Both decisions were made within 4 months of first hearing the words “commercial real estate”, but I tend to make decisions fast and follow my gut.

These risks had the common denominator of my curiosity. I picked the routes that would provide me with the biggest learning opportunities as I believe that should be my only priority at this age. This willingness to learn is what started my involvement in multiple industry networks including the Commercial Real Estate Woman (CREW) Network. As I started attending events hosted by the CREW Calgary Chapter, I was told by multiple women that I should apply for the CREW Network Foundation Scholarship.

This scholarship offered a financial component and an internship opportunity. I was immediately intrigued. Although I felt like I would have been a prime candidate for this scholarship and would make the most of it, I also understood that I was competing against women from across North America. Being an applicant from the University of Calgary did not feel as high profile in comparison to some of the other applications from young women that where studying at schools like Yale, Harvard and Stanford.

I poured hours into the essay portion of this scholarship, and I wanted it enough to work as hard as I possibly could. To make sure I was on the right track, I reached out to Gillian Lawrence; a Calgary local who is a past president of the CREW Calgary Chapter and previous director of the Global CREW Network Board. She spent hours on Zoom with me, going over every detail of my application. Her help was immeasurable.

Two months later, in June of 2020, I received a call congratulating me on being one of the 25 recipients of the 2020 CREW Network Foundation Scholarship. Another single event that snowballed my career! Although the state of the world was uncertain due to Covid-19, I was hoping the internship portion of this scholarship could provide me with the international opportunity I’d been craving.

This scholarship gave me the motivation I needed to focus more than ever on my career in real estate.

Along with taking 5 classes, I studied and wrote my Alberta Real Estate License, continued to work at the brokerage, and did a substantial amount of research on the industry. Through my research, I learned as much as I could about the commercial real estate condition of my favourite city - New York. New York City (NYC) is one of the largest commercial real estate investment markets with over 450 million square feet of office space in Manhattan. This is more than 6 times the amount of space available in Calgary. New York has been my favourite city for as long as I can remember. I grew up as a theatre nerd and my love of Broadway made NYC the epicenter of the universe to me. It was always on my bucket list to live there at some point in my life.

Up until this point, I was given little information on the internship associated with the CREW Scholarship. All I knew was that it was offered by CBRE and they would give me the chance to request which city I would like to work in. I think you can guess what my preference was... My curiosity with the NYC market also made me wonder about NYC professionals, so I went into a rabbit hole of creeping individuals LinkedIn profiles. I filtered individuals that worked at CBRE in New York and stumbled across a previous CREW Scholarship winner who is now the youngest Executive Vice President in the organization, Emily (Jones) Chabrier. I was ecstatic! This was my chance to have common ground with one of these professionals and gave me an excuse to reach out and ask if she would be willing to chat with me about the market. I sent her a cold email and to my surprise she responded, so we set up a call.

A minor detail that is comical about this call, was she suggested a time in which she was available on Friday, November 6th. I understood that her time is more valuable than mine, so I accepted the calendar invite immediately even though it was a day I knew I was busy. November 6th is my mom’s birthday and I booked us a spa day. With this call possibly being my one chance to connect with a broker in NYC, it was my number one priority. I asked one of the employees of the spa if there was a room available to take a call. There I was, in a bathrobe, halfway through a spa service, on one of the most important phone calls of my life. Looking back, my relaxed state at the time could have been a contributing factor for how well the call went! Emily was very generous with her time and advice - we had a great chat.

Fast forward to January, I kept in touch with Emily but still no word back from CBRE on the internship. I saw that CBRE New York had an internship posting up on their job board, so I reached out to the HR contact I was connected with through CREW, and Emily once again. She was kind enough to recommend me for the internship and the HR department offered me the position soon after.

My original plan was to accept this incredible short-term opportunity in New York and then return to the brokerage in Calgary afterwards. I had recently finished my Alberta CRE license and my offer was pending for an Associate position. I tend to get tunnel vision and to be a commercial real estate broker at the age of 21 felt like a huge opportunity I did not want to pass up. Plus, I felt safe and happy and in my current position and with my life in Calgary.

This is where my life took a turn down a path I did not anticipate. When I told my existing employer about the internship, their initial reaction was over the top support. My direct boss at the time was one of the most caring and supportive individuals I have ever met, and this scenario was no different. Feeling very confident with my path, I got some devastating news.

The brokerage headquarters in Toronto were not as supportive of this internship as my team in Calgary was. They gave word that if I accepted this internship at CBRE, they no longer had a place for me. Not only was I going to be working in a different country where my proprietary information was useless, but I was going there as an Intern. In my mind, the brokerage in Calgary and CBRE New York were of no competition to each other and if anything, I could have learned from CBRE NYC and added more value to my current brokerage upon my return.

For a few weeks, I was absolutely torn about what decision to make. My gut was telling me I needed to go to New York, but my head kept convincing me I needed to play it safe and stick with the devil I know. Leading up to this, my employer had treated me incredibly well. I had good compensation, flexibility in my job, and my team felt like family - I didn’t want to disappoint any of them. To get some clarity, I reached out to an industry professional who I admire at CBRE, Mackenzie Allen, as I needed some advice from the inside. She gave me some incredible advice and I appreciate her willingness to help more than she knows. I needed some direction as accepting this internship in New York made me feel like I would be ruining my career in Calgary, and I am not one to be reckless or move on without looking back.

I had taken small , calculated risks before, but it felt like there was a lot more on the line this time. Talking with other industry professionals made me realize that there was an endless amount of career opportunities available to me in the industry and going to New York would only help improve my professional credibility and give me the life experience that I have craved since I was a little girl. Once I came to this realization, I ripped off the Band-Aid and quit my current position on February 8^th, 2021. With the amount of love I had for that team, it was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. I care so much about my career that making this decision felt worse than any personal decision I’ve had to make.