Pension Real Estate Association (PREA) Foundation has approved an $8 million investment into Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) Career over five years — SEO’s largest multi-year grant — to continue developing and placing a pipeline of Black, Hispanic and Native American interns and entry-level candidates at top real estate firms.
Coupled with an initial $ 2.8M pilot grant to launch the SEO Real Estate Track in 2018, the grand brings the total investment to $10.8 million to help develop a diverse career pipeline into commercial real estate.
“We are proud to partner with SEO to provide students with the tools and resources they need to succeed in the commercial real estate industry,” said Deborah Harmon, co-founder of the PREA Foundation and CEO at Artemis Real Estate Partners. “This collaboration is an important step forward in producing a more diverse and inclusive workforce that reflects the communities we serve.”
Technical training has helped students succeed in real estate private equity, capital markets, property management, investor relations, commercial real estate and asset management.
The grant will allow SEO Career to expose 2,600 students to education events on-campus with partner schools and real estate-themed training boot camps for freshmen and sophomores in multiple cities, including Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. Through its newest initiative SEO Hire, the grant also strengthens the organization’s ability to expand its efforts of closing the gap of full-time employment opportunities by providing 300 full-time jobs.
Since its launch in 2017, the PREA and SEO Career Real Estate Track partnership has provided intensive, industry-led training and coaching to 450-plus interns across 30-plus cities. Students have secured summer internships with firms across the commercial real estate industry, with interns earning over $4 million in wages across five years. Of the program’s graduating class of 2022, an average of 90% currently work full-time in the real estate industry.
“PREA’s partnership elevates SEO Career being the premier real estate training program for historically excluded students in the country,” said Mindy Davis, senior vice president and managing director of SEO Career. “This grant takes our work to the next level in closing the opportunity gap for young professionals of color and ensuring the real estate industry has access to a diversified workforce.”
By merging SEO Career’s structured professional development program with PREA’s network of 100-plus partner firms, interns have exclusive access to c-suite executives, top internship opportunities, 100-lus hours of coaching and training and a lifelong professional network.
