Real Assets

Board Members

Freehold
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The Brief (pro bono):

Find a diverse range of people with complementary skillsets

Freehold
wanted to create a Board that was – and is – truly representative of the LGBTQIA+ community within Real Estate. The challenge was to identify and engage candidates who had a genuine passion for championing LGBTQIA+ issues combined with the capacity to take on a pro bono role.

We were tasked to find candidates with a range of complementary skillsets that did not duplicate existing Board experience. This was combined with a wish to have people with a range of experience, diversity of thought and background and a readiness to challenge where required.

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The Approach:

Applied extensive search sensitively using fully engaged network

Given the complexity of the search, and the lack of visibility of many of the candidate’s connection to the LGBTQIA+ community, the team needed to leverage their combined extensive networks across Real Estate for recommendations and introductions.

The team engaged with more than 100 referral contacts and candidates through the process, resulting in a shortlist of six candidates for the Board Director role and three candidates for Next-Gen Board Member role.

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The Result:

A range of passionate leaders across four key areas

The four successful candidates bring a huge amount of diversity for Freehold LGBT + CIC. Each candidate represents a different ethnicity, ability, sexuality or professional background previously unrepresented.

Speaking seven languages between them, they are Anyi Hobson (she/her), Warren Stapley (he/they), Sarah Chapman (she/her) and Eric Chou (he/him), who cover Law, Asset Management, Real Estate Advisory, and ED&I.

We look forward to seeing this Board support Freehold grow into its next stage of development and industry impact.

"Recruiting new board members for a community interest company dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusion within the real estate industry was a pretty challenging and specific brief. Rob and Jodi really listened to our requirements and pulled together a great range of candidates, delivering a great result for us after a seamless process".

Scott Parsons (Chief Operating Officer, UK at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Co-Chair of Freehold)

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