Q&A with White Lotus Group's Ashley Kuhn: How CREW Omaha is providing mentorship, industry knowledge

[Originally published on MorningSky Omaha]

Ashley Kuhn is the executive vice president of Omaha's White Lotus Group, but her leadership duties don't end there. Kuhn is also the programs director for the Omaha chapter of Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW), and a part of planning committee for the 2018 CRE Summit, which will host its first-ever CREW breakout session and a Ted Talk by CREW member, Quinn Texmo.

We sat down with Kuhn to pick her brain about how each of her roles blend together, and how her experiences navigating the waters of CRE have shaped the advice and goals she has for both men and women in the industry today.

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Tell me a little about what CREW is all about, and how you became involved.

Ashley Kuhn: Our CEO, Arun Agarwal, was asked to speak at an event five years ago and he asked me to go with him. The second I walked in the door I thought, "Oh my goodness, this is amazing! I have to be a part of this!"

I was in the industry for about ten years before I joined CREW, and never had any women in any meetings, ever. Then I come to this meeting and see that there are women in the industry doing big things.

This group is all about showing that there are women in the industry, and putting emphasis on bringing women into that circle. We have monthly luncheons, usually at the Scott Conference Center, where we have a speaker come and talk about an Omaha development topic.

Where are CREW members most involved in commercial real estate?

Legal and brokerage are at the top, followed closely behind by title companies. We have 130+ members right now and they’re everywhere across the board: architects, construction, brokers, legal. You name it, we've got it.

What opportunities does CREW present for women in the industry?

The number one thing CREW does is create a focus on advancing women in the real estate field whether through information, mentorship, networking, etc.

The second thing it brings is the knowledge of what's going on in the industry. A lot of times we’re in our own bubbles; We know what’s going on in our company, or in our developments, but unless it’s in the paper, we don’t necessarily know the ins and outs of other developments. What happened? What mistakes were made that we can skip in our life?

What do you think it is about commercial real estate that interests the women in CREW?

It's a challenge. It’s a male dominated industry and it's actually kind of fun to walk in the meeting and people think, "Oh it's the admin or the assistant," and then actually ending up knowing more than anyone else in the room.

More than that, though, is there’s no industry that changes the face of the city more than real estate, so it’s powerful to be at the forefront of that.

Did you ever face any complications or hurdles as a woman entering the industry?

Maybe more on the construction side. I’ve done a lot of project management along the way. It’s hard to step in with someone who has been in the industry for 40 years and they look at you and they think, "You’re young, you’re a girl, and you don’t know what you’re talking about." My biggest challenge is, as a woman, is I have had to educate myself more than my male counterparts in the room to be taken seriously.

What did you do before joining White Lotus?

I was in college for real estate, land use economics and investment finance. Then Arun and I ran into each other at a networking event. He was just then getting White Lotus Group off the ground and mentioned he was looking for someone. As a joke he said, ‘Show up on Monday,’ but I actually showed up on Monday. Fifteen years later, here we are.

What school did you go to?

I went to UNL then I switched up to UNO for their real estate program.

I’ve been hearing a lot about the real estate program. It sounds like it’s really growing.

It is an amazing program. It’s really in depth. A lot of the major players in Omaha have come out of that program. They have a really good hand into the actual real estate environment, which is nice because a lot of times you go to real estate school and you learn the textbook version of everything, not necessarily the real world. They do a good job of keeping you entrenched in the real world so you know what you’re learning is being applied to real world.

David Beberwyk out of UNO has done an awesome job with the program. He’s done a really good job of focusing on getting women into the program. CREW actually teamed up with him to figure out how we can infiltrate high schools and colleges to get people into the industry.

Does CREW assist with job placement?

We offer free lunches for the students. We have quite a few of the people that have come out of that program that are interns of companies with people that are in CREW.

How does CREW work from a regional or national standpoint?

There’s about 10,000 people in CREW. London was our first international chapter. We have a National Board of Directors, and each of the people on the board is assigned to a region. Three times a year we have CREW National meetings where we talk about whatever topics are hot at the moment and get guidance for our chapters. Last year Chris Mensinger (President-Elect and Director of CREW Omaha) and I went to Toronto, and it was great.

The #MeToo movement is really big right now. Do you think there are a lot of women who struggle with harassment in the workplace in CRE?

I wouldn’t necessarily define it as harassment so much as being treated less than capable. Omaha is such a small city and it would only take one slip for your career to be ruined. In Omaha, I don’t hear about it much.

Does CREW give women tools to be prepared for situations like that?

Absolutely! We have Quinn Texmo, and she’s amazing. She speaks nationally about gender disparity, issues in the workforce, and women and men’s communication in the workplace.

At least once a year she comes to speak at a luncheon on that, but we also have breakout seminars to help.She is the one that’s doing the talk at the CRE Summit this year.

What is your involvement in the upcoming CRE Summit?

I am on the planning committee and this year, CREW was given the nod from Jerry Slusky to do our own breakout session. We are doing ours on autonomous cars. We were in Houston and saw this breakout about autonomous cars, and were just mindblown by how awesome it was, so we’re bringing those speakers from CREW National to Omaha.

We’re thinking long term about real estate developments when someone has a car that can drop them off at work and go park wherever it wants. What we’re seeing is the parking ratios on developments are going to go down, and we’ll be able to get more density because you won’t have to plan around 100,000 cars being at your development.

It seems so far away, but what do you think the reaction is going to be?

It’s fast approaching. If you talk to a lot of automotive companies, we’re talking about 10 years. The scary thing for us as developers is we haven’t started planning ahead for that. So it’ll be interested to see how these developments change or phase in things like loading zones.

Are there other ways CREW is involved in the CRE Summit?

There are a bunch of us that are involved on an individual basis, but this is the first year we’re putting the force together and making a presence.

What do you think the CRE Summit has to offer this year for women?

This breakout is huge for us, and then the Ted Talk that Quinn is doing. They do an awesome job every year of letting it be known that we’re present.

What companies in town do you see making big efforts to be more inclusive to women?

I would say Lockwood Development is big at it. We’re obviously big at it. We have more women than men, and our executive team is dominated by women. Colliersis quickly moving women up the chain; Chris Mensinger was just moved to vice president there. Alley Poyner is awesome for women.

I graduated in the middle of the Great Recession and it was really depressing how hard it was to find a job. It makes me happy for the next generation of graduates that there are those opportunities not only for internships but also for jobs straight out of the real estate program.

It was. You had that conversation where you have to have experience, you have to have college, you have to have both. When I was in the program, you had to have an internship as one of your classes. They do a really good job of pushing people out there before they’re done with college so they get their foot in the door and say, "This is what I’ve been doing for the last year along with getting my education.”

What would you like to see happen for women in CRE?

We have to have a voice and we can’t wait for someone to give us that voice. With us being 23 percent less than men from a pay rate in commercial real estate, we have to start being the whistle blowers. If I’m in the VP seat, and there’s another VP, I need to know how much they’re making, and if they’re making more than me, then there has to be some qualification that they’re making more than me.

The era of women tip toeing around because they’re afraid of losing their jobs or not being promoted, that’s gone. We just have to speak our minds. I don’t think we have to be fearful of blowing the whistle anymore.

As women we tend to have the "imposter syndrome." We are looking around thinking, "Everyone else knows all this stuff. Everyone else is smarter than me. Everyone else sounds better than me." Getting over that imposter syndrome is important, and realizing that most of the people in the room are just faking it until they make it. Just speak up! You know what you’re talking about. You’re smart. You’re strong. You’re capable.

What advice would you give women going into CRE?

Find a mentor. It doesn't have to be a woman, but have a mentor in the workplace that can guide you through the red tape. Find that mentor straight out of college. You can walk up to most of the CEOs in Omaha and they’ll let you pop in there office or ask for feedback.

If you could speak to yourself when you were first going into CRE, knowing what you know now, what would you say?

Just go for it! There were a lot of times where I was hesitant. I didn’t like networking, because again, it was that imposter syndrome. Just right out of the gate, I would have joined all those groups and started networking.

Anything else you would want people to know about CREW?

These white papers are really important and available for everyone. Everyone should download the white papers and read about the disparities in commercial real estate and do some inner reflection on how we can all be a part of making that change.