On February 15th the Runstad Department of Real Estate and Foster School of Business held their annual symposium, “Hacking Inequity in Access to Real Estate Capital: Best Practices and New Options”. This year the event was co-sponsored by Urban@UW and Urban Land Institute. After the keynote’s address, attendees heard from two panels: one focused on the experiences of developers seeking capital, and the other on the experiences and advice of capital providers. Urban@UW has posted a story here. This event was well attended and wonderful exposure for the great things happening in the department and the Runstad Advisory Board! A sincere thank you to board members Diane Sugimura and Kristin Ryan for bringing this idea to fruition.
This year’s symposium was a follow up to the panel discussion on EDI in real estate capital investments that was held at the Autumn 2021 Advisory Board Meeting. A recording of that session can be found here.
Hacking Inequities Event summary overview
Keynote Speaker Eve Picker: Eve is the founder of Small Change, a real estate crowdfunding website, devoted to female and BIPOC sponsors, non-traditional projects, and fundraising from non-accredited investors
Capital Seekers Panel:
Moderator Donald King, Affiliate Professor of Architecture; President and CEO of the Nehemiah Initiative
Maria Barrientos, Partner BarrientosRYAN
Jaebadiah Gardner, Founder and CEO of GardnerGlobal, Inc.
Kateesha Atterberry, Founder and Managing Director, Urban Black
Leslie Byrd, Alpha Sharp Development Partners; Amazon HEA cohort member
Capital Providers Panel:
Moderator M. Michelle Purnell-Hepburn: Foster School Associate Dean for Inclusion and Diversity
Eve Picker, Founder, Small Change
Mele Miller: Chief Operations Officer for a CDFI and cooperative credit union.
Larry Gilmore: Founder, President and CEO of CLeanBlu Capital Group.