2024 Winter Issue of Urban Land - 21

Emma West, chair of the WLI
Americas Executive Committee and
and a partner at Bousfields Inc.
in ULI, where she rose to become a
District Council chair and participate
in the WLI Americas committee that
she now leads.
West says that the WLI has helped
to significantly increase women's
participation in ULI, noting that
female speakers now make up
about 40 percent of the panelists
at the Institute's Fall and Spring
Meetings. When WLI celebrated its
10th anniversary in 2022, the group
began working on an updated strategic
plan for how to expand its
efforts. As a result, West says, WLI
is developing a new program to help
women real estate entrepreneurs
with issues such as getting access to
capital, and is working to better integrate
with other parts of ULI, such
as the Young Leaders Group.l
Gifts to the Foundation and the
Annual Fund are powering these
amazing initiatives and programs
and are helping ULI reach its goal
to raise $100 million to improve our
communities through the Our Cities,
Our Future campaign. That effort
aims to further ULI's mission priorities
of accelerating decarbonization
of the built environment, developing
the next generation of diverse real
estate leaders, and creating attainable
housing strategies. Giving is
also a way that each ULI member
can make an impact across the organization
that ripples into the world
and generates positive change.
Product Council scholarships
Nearly a decade ago, Thomas J.
McElroy was in his early 30s and
relatively new to the real estate
business when he joined the Urban
Development Mixed Use Council
(UDMUC) Red, one of ULI's 68 U.S.
Product Councils. McElroy recalls
that he felt a bit intimidated at
first to be part of discussions with
prestigious senior figures in the real
estate industry- " very, very heavy
hitters, " as he describes them. He
was thankful that one of the council
members-Chicago-based CBRE
executive Marty Stern-encouraged
him to participate and share his
views from a youthful perspective
during Stern's regular " hot topics "
sessions.
" It was just an hour of Marty commanding
the room and calling on
people, " says McElroy, who is now
senior vice president of capital markets
for Dominium, a major nationwide
developer and manager of
affordable housing. " He just made it
a special group, in which everybody
felt close and connected. "
After Stern's death in 2019, McElCandace
Damon, chair of ULI
Placemaking Council and board
chair of HR&A Advisors
roy, who is UDMUC Red vice chair,
joined other council members to
honor him by creating a program
to bring new people onto the council
and increase its diversity. They
started the Marty Stern Inclusion
Fund, which provides $5,000 scholarships
to pay for recipients' ULI
memberships for a year and enable
them to travel to meetings.
" It's a way to recruit rising talent,
people who might otherwise not be
able to afford to attend, " McElroy
says. There's an emphasis on creating
an opportunity for younger
people, particularly from minority
groups, who can bring a different
perspective to Product Council discussions. "
McElroy
believes so strongly in the
effort that he's been working with
ULI to get other Product Councils to
participate in the program as well.
One prominent adopter is the
Placemaking Council (PMC), whose
chair, Candace Damon, says that it
opted for a variation on the original
formula. Instead of focusing on
youth, PMC has provided scholarships
to two established women
professionals-one is the head of an
institute at the University of Pennsylvania,
and the other is a small-scale
community-based developer.
" I'm sure you're familiar with this
debate about whether we really
ought to be placemaking, " says
Damon, who is board chair of HR&A
Advisors, a strategic guidance, analysis,
and implementation planning
firm. " Why is the new place better
than the old place? That's a conversation
that I really want to entertain.
Damon thinks the two scholarship
recipients will be " hugely helpful " in
that discussion.
Addressing infrastructure needs
Since its inception in 2020, ULI's
Curtis Infrastructure Initiative, named
in honor of the late ULI Foundation
chair James J. Curtis III, has worked
Thomas J. McElroy,
senior vice president. Dominium
WINTER 202 4
URBAN LAND
21
ULI FOUNDATION
2024 Winter Issue of Urban Land

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of 2024 Winter Issue of Urban Land
