CREATE Marks First Decade

Rooftop Celebration Commemorates CREATE’s 10th Anniversary and Its Accomplishments

Commercial Real Estate Alliance for Tomorrow’s Employees (CREATE) commemorated its 10th anniversary at a festive rooftop reception at 221 Main on October 4. The celebration brought together students currently enrolled in the CREATE Fellows program at SF State, Fellows alumni, instructors and other program volunteers, and donors who support this results-driven workforce development program. The event acknowledged visionaries who foresaw a need to expand and diversify the CRE workforce years ago.

“The power lies in our alliance,” CREATE Director Tory Brubaker said at the event. Over the past decade, CREATE evolved from an effort to tackle the CRE talent deficit. It has grown into a partnership of four real estate associations (BOMA San Francisco, BOMA Oakland/East Bay, NAIOP SF Bay Area, and IREM SF Bay Area), delivering a 16-module curriculum at SF State and Merritt College. SF State is known for having one of the nation’s most diverse student populations.

Tawni Sullivan with Alexandria Real Estate Equities and Chair of CREATE noted that more than 400 students have graduated from the program and that approximately 30% gained employment in the industry upon graduation. “CREATE is a solution to our future,” she said. To facilitate cost-effective hiring, CREATE’s career portal lets employers post entry-level jobs and internships at no cost and candidates to post their resumés. Several Fellows alums shared stories about how the program impacted their career paths and led to employment opportuMarc Intermaggio, former BOMA SF executive; Melinda Ellis Evers nities. CREATE graduate and Sarah MacIntyre, Ellis Partners; and Tory Brubaker, CREATE. Anne Chung, now an assistant property manager at Salesforce Tower (BXP), said: “This is what I always dreamed of,” remarking that experiences with her mentor, informational interviews and connections were important to her career success. She encouraged students to learn about every subject that CREATE offers. (Continued on the next page)

CREATE Anniversary (Continued from previous page)

CREATE Treasurer Sarah MacIntyre with Ellis Partners thanked former BOMA SF Executive Vice President Marc Intermaggio, Sandra Boyle of Cushman & Wakefield, the Boyle Family Foundation, and other early supporters including Skyline Construction, Able/ ABM and Kilroy Realty.

“As CREATE embarks on its next decade, we see an opportunity to increase diversity in our industry and bring a richer set of ideas to the CRE table,” Brubaker noted. With the harsh reality of a retiring workforce, we must continue to expand and diversify our talent pool. The talent drought affects us all—owners, managers, vendors—and together, we can achieve a sustainable workforce. Please donate today at createworkforce.org/ Delivering contribute/donate. Career-Ready Employees to the CRE Industry since 2012

Nancy Gille, REAL Systems; Jim Arce, Real Concepts; Meade Boutwell, CBRE; and ChitKumar Rokad, Fellows student.

Years

CREATE is sustained by contributions from the industry employers that it serves. Please consider making your tax deductible donation to this vibrant program. To learn more visit www.createworkforce.org/ contribute/donate or email Tory Brubaker at info@createworkforce.org.

DONATE TODAY AT WWW.CREATEWORKFORCE.ORG

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San Francisco Voters Hit Reset Button on Balance of the Board, Public Safety Efforts

by David Harrison, BOMA SF Manager of Government and Public Affairs The 2022 election represents a notable shift in the power balance in City government. Mayor London Breed’s moderate Democratic coalition picked up two key seats on the Board of Supervisors while also holding key mayoral appointments for District Attorney and the Board of Education. These key wins, combined with a realignment of citywide elections with the presidential election cycle, give Breed two years to demonstrate improvement to voters on the contentious issues of public safety and homelessness while she also tries to lead downtown out of a pandemic-induced economic downturn. While tackling these challenges will be no small task, the election also marks the first opportunity the mayor has had since 2018 to work with a board that is more politically aligned with her priorities—the 2020 iteration of the Board of Supervisors was perhaps the most recalcitrant to the mayor’s politics yet.

This cycle’s biggest surprise came in District 4 (Outer Sunset), where Joel Engardio became the first challenger in the history of San Francisco’s district election era to defeat an elected incumbent supervisor, Gordon Mar. Engardio capitalized on a growing wave of discontent from San Francisco voters relating to public safety and the perceived incompetence of ideological elected officials. Mar drew criticism from constituents for not supporting the recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin or School Board Members Allison Collins, Gabriella Lopez, and Faauuga Moliga. Engardio shrewdly centered himself within the debates on these issues, leading both the community group Stop Crime SF and helping lead the school board recall efforts. The success of the other victorious supervisor candidate, moderate Matt Dorsey, was also remarkable. After being appointed by Breed to the vacant District 6 (SOMA, Mission Bay) seat, Dorsey broke a long streak of misfortune for mayoral appointees. In the last four elections in which a mayoral appointee ran against a challenger, the appointee lost. Even more impressively, Dorsey soundly defeated a formidable challenger in Honey Mahogany. After Supervisor Matt Haney departed to Sacramento, Mahogany—Haney’s chief of staff and former chair to the powerful San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee—was assumed to be the seat’s heir apparent. Renewed Focus on Consensus Building The victories of Engardio and Dorsey shift the dynamics of the board, adding promise to a renewed focus on consensus building instead of the deep ideological divide that has defined the legislative body in the last two cycles. Most notably, the board’s progressive majority appears now to be more of a progressive plurality, meaning staunch progressives will have to appeal to their centrist or moderate counterparts for votes. In fact, it likely won’t be the moderate bloc either that serves as the power center for the board, but rather the several supervisors in the middle who tend to gravitate toward either side depending on specific policy issues. The ability to compromise and build consensus—an elusive outcome in San Francisco these days—will be what defines success for this year’s board. Supervisors firmly in the progressive camp include District 1’s Connie Chan (the Richmond), District 5’s Dean Preston (NOPA, Western Addition, Tenderloin), District 9’s Hillary Ronen (Mission, Bernal Heights, Portola), and District 10 supervisor and current Board President Shamann Walton (Portero Hill, Bayiew-Hunters Point). The moderate wing now