Ernie Jarvis is frustrated and exhausted.
Not long after the death of George Floyd, the fifth-generation Washingtonian and commercial real estate veteran issued a plea to the heads of the world’s top real estate brokerage companies.
In a 10-point plan, he implored them to make a more deliberate and concerted effort to recruit, train and promote Black employees among their ranks and in their executive leadership. Two years later, despite seemingly earnest calls for change, a lack of sufficient progress, certainly in Black representation, remains apparent on executive leadership pages for the nation’s top brokerages, including Avison Young, CBRE, Cresa, Cushman & Wakefield, JLL, Newmark, Savills and Transwestern.
It goes well beyond those names. According to the Urban Land Institute’s 2021 Global Real Estate DEI Survey, while 92% of surveyed firms have some sort of DEI plan, 85% of all senior-level industry execs in North America are white.
“Someone said to me the other day: ‘Ernie,…
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