Congratulations 2020 NAWRB Leadership Award Winner Gina Diez Barroso, CEO Grupo Diarq!

NAWRB is proud to award Gina Diez Barroso with the 2020 Commercial Leader Award! Gina Diez Barroso is the founder of Diarq Holdings, eight design and real estate development companies with offices in Mexico and the United States. She is also the president and founder of CENTRO, the first University in Mexico focused on creative education, and Dalia Empower, a global initiative that helps women achieve their goals. Diez Barroso is the only Latin American woman member of C200.org, Women’s Executive Leadership Organization, WPO and WCD. She is currently the representative of Mexico at the W20 women’s initiative of the G20.

Each year, the NAWRB Leadership Awards honor women leaders in the housing ecosystem who are utilizing their expertise and passion to break glass ceilings in the corporate world and facilitate the growth of their local communities. Congratulations, Gina Diez Barroso!

SB 826 Women On Boards Passes. What Happens Next?

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SB 826, known as the women on boards bill, narrowly cleared the California State Assembly with the minimum amount of votes required and then went on to clear the state Senate. The measure requiring corporate boards to include at least one woman by the end of 2019 and depending on the size of the company, up to three by the end of 2021 now sits on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk waiting to be approved or vetoed. Continue reading

Get Your Strong On: Five Songs to Mood-Boost Your Strength

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Every day it seems as if we are called on to be strong in one form or another. Whether it’s physical, mental or emotional, the challenge to be strong can be as simple as saying no to the second piece of pie or as profound as getting out of bed in the wake of personal tragedy.

No matter what level of endurance you have to tap into, here are five songs showcasing the words “strong” “stronger” or “strength” to help build your mindset.

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SHETalk: Tami Bonnell of EXIT Realty

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To say that we had compelling, witty, and even funny speakers at this year’s conference would be an understatement. So, we knew when CEO of EXIT Realty Corp. Tami Bonnell signed on to deliver a SHETalk at our 2018 Conference in Chicago, we knew we were in for a treat.

Tami has more experience than most in real estate, selling her first house at thirteen and obtaining her real estate license the day she turned eighteen. Even with that experience, she has had to work hard to reach the level of influence she has today. In her SHETalk, she shared a few ways she keeps ahead of her goals.

     “It’s Your Mindset and What You Do with Your Time that Really Matters”

“You know, I want to put you in a different head space today,” Tami said as she introduced the system helping to grow her business every month. She emphasized the principles she was about to introduce can apply to any business—not only real estate.

First, she asked everyone in the audience to participate in an exercise where we all stood up, stretching our arms out as far as possible. Then, she asked us to close our eyes and imagine our arms going about a foot farther. When our eyes opened, our arms were much further than we imagined.

“Everything that we do is because of how we think,” she began. “It has nothing to do with the circumstances you’re in; it has everything to do with the choices we make.It’s your mindset and what you do with your time that really matters,” she said, adding “Choosing to do something with deliberate intent is how you get from Point A to Point B.”

Most of us of us have run out the door with a list of more things than we have time for, she told us. We say “we must” and “we have to” when really, we should want and expect it. The problem with the “musts” and the “have tos” is that our subconscious mind doesn’t accept the negative the same way it does the positive. If we say we want and expect, it will help us to follow through. 

Finding Your Path

Sometimes, in order to get done what we want and expect to get done, we have to find a more balanced way of doing things. When she started at EXIT twenty years ago, it was a Canadian company with no office in the U.S. She bought the rights to the entire New England states, building the US brand from a dead stop. From scratch, she cultivated 35,000 agents and traveled frequently to build momentum, driven forward by thinking of everyone she was responsible for on a daily basis. Her hard work paid off as she became US Vice President within her first year, President the second year and CEO of the company in 2012.

She came home late one night a couple of years into traveling to build EXIT. As she pulled up, she noticed for the first time beautiful Paul Revere lanterns in her circular driveway and in the backyard. She walked in and said to her husband “Thank you so much honey, I wanted those forever I love those lanterns, they’re beautiful.” He replied “Your welcome, I put them in six months ago.” That moment was a wake-up call for Tami. “I really started working on ‘I’ve got to do this smarter, I’ve got to do this better,’” she said.

    Working with Your Dirty Dozen and the 30,000, 2,000 Foot and Street Level Views

The better way is a plan that builds in time to work on the long view of whatever you are trying to accomplish, personal and professional. Committing is often the hardest part, says Tami as most people live on the sidelines in a safe area. But with this plan, you can build in time to take in the long view.

One hour a month should be set aside to look at the 30,000-foot view. This is a time to think about where the trends are in your industry. What are the resources that you should be going to every single month? If you spend time looking at things from the 30,000 foot view, you’ll know what’s selling and what’s not, you’ll be ahead of the curve on trends and will better be able to find your niche and can take advantage of every opportunity.

Who Are Your “Dirty Dozen”?

According to Tami, your “Dirty Dozen” are twelve people in or related to your field with whom you form a connection—such as a leader you’d like to follow and with whom you can share information every four-to-six weeks.The second hour of the month should be spent looking at your goals from a 2,000-foot view, say at the statewide level and touching base with six of your Dirty Dozen. For someone in real estate, this could be one person from the government on a state level and one from the local level, for example.

In order to develop these connections, you should look to help them more than they help you—add value to their lives, do your homework and find out about them. The relationship doesn’t have to be a “tit for tat” transactional relationship, it can be more personal Tami points out. “People want to matter,” she says adding that if you find common ground and build a connection, it will pay off.

For the third hour, you want to look at you, Tami says. Ask yourself some effective questions like “What am I really good at?” and “What do I need to do to get where I want?”

For the final piece of the puzzle, she introduced a four-hour action plan where halfway through the month, you plan out six weeks ahead of time and make sure to book off four hours to work on yourself and your plan. Look out over those six weeks with where you want to be in mind. And do it for your whole life both personal and professional. “I have birthday cards in my glove compartment in case I just forgot,” Tami says, illustrating her point.

You can even incorporate a small part of this planning ahead philosophy on a daily basis. Tami said she takes 120 seconds every morning to say how her day will go and think about how she wants the people she encounters to feel. At the end of every day, she takes 120 seconds to think about what worked for that day and what she is grateful for, and she writes down any concerns or problems.

“All of us are a work in progress,” said Tami as she closed out her SHETalk. “Every segment starts to connect and then you excel.”

We can’t wait to get started.

In Memory of Aretha Franklin, a Legendary Woman

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Sometimes the word legend is used too easily. Not so with Aretha Franklin, who passed away this morning from cancer at age 76. Aretha was nothing short of legendary. With her, all of the superlatives apply. Not only did her voice touch the hearts of multiple generations, but its raw richness was the very definition of soul.

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Stories of Character and Courage-NDILC Luncheon Panel

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After a jam-packed morning of information and new industry developments, our conference attendees were treated to an informal panel session led by NDILC (NAWRB Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Council) Chairwoman, President & CEO of NAWRB Desirée Patno, Co-chair Vanessa Montañez, and Council Members Sarah Goldfrank, Dr. Chitra Dorai, Stacey M. Walker, and Teresa Palacios Smith.

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2018 Live Conference Updates: OMWI/Procuring Contracts

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Procuring contracts may not sound the most glamorous of topics, however, this panel was not only information-packed but all of our speakers from government and local agencies made themselves incredibly accessible to our attendees. Continue reading

NAWRB Hits the Ground Running in Chicago

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Less than twenty-four hours after landing in Chicago our team hits the ground running putting all the pieces in place ahead of our 2018 Year of Women Conference.

In short order, we set up our command center in the historic Standard Club in downtown Chicago—the only private club to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.  Continue reading

John Yen Wong, Founding Chairman of AREAA, & Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire, CEO 2020 Women on Boards on NAWRB Conference, Year of Women

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We are thrilled to have the support of John Yen Wong, Founding Chairman of the Asian Real Estate Association of America (AREAA) and Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire, CEO and L.A. Chapter Co-chair of 2020 Women on Boards ahead of our 5th Annual Conference in Chicago!

John keeps it simple:: “NAWRB: Great Content, Great Speakers, Great Conferences, Great People, Great Organization.”

While Betsy sums up her strategic alliance with NAWRB this way “ “Congratulations to NAWRB, on your big national conference in Chicago! As CEO of 2020 Women on Boards, I am pleased we have a strategic alliance with NAWRB, as we both dedicate efforts to advance women in their careers, and to be part of the massive campaign to increase the numbers of women directors on corporate boards to at least 20% by the year 2020. We applaud your success as women business leaders in real estate!”

With John and Betsy behind us, we continue to rock our initiatives of advancing women on boards and pushing for diversity and inclusion at every turn.

See you in Chicago!

 

 

 

 

If Men and Women Are More Similar Than Not, Why Do They Feel Differently About Homeownership?

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The unique challenges women have faced in the past and continue to face today make owning a home a tangible sign of success for a woman. A woman’s home is a space to creatively express desires and dreams and to evoke certain feelings. From a practical standpoint, it’s an investment and source of security that remains a constant regardless of her marital status.

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