Educational programs are providing avenues for talented minority professionals to enter the industry. Project REAP—the acronym stands for Real Estate Associates Program—sponsors training programs that each draw several dozen young minority professionals. So far, Project REAP has organized sessions in New York City, Cleveland and Los Angeles, and a debut program in Dallas is on the radar for 2014. Backed by a broad coalition of companies and industry associations, the program draws people with eclectic professional backgrounds and often with advanced degrees. University programs, too, are important conduits. At the University of Southern California, the Ross Minority Program in Real Estate trains participants to work in development in underserved communities. More than 700 people have completed the program since 1993, and its alumni are having an impact on their communities. Vanessa Delgado heads the development team at Los Angeles-based Primestor Development Inc., which specializes in developing retail projects for Latino neighborhoods. Such success stories are encouraging, but the pace of change remains slow. “What isn’t taking place as quickly as we’d like to see is that young people aren’t moving up the ladder into management roles as much as we’d like to see,” remarked Stan Ross, founder of the Ross Minority Program and chairman of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate. Minority professionals sometimes feel that striking out on their own offers a faster path to success than joining a company. The perception reduces the pool of minority professionals available to the industry, he argued.
