The Green Cities Company is a minority and women-owned business – 59 percent of its workforce are women. The company has developed what it calls a diversity, equity, inclusion and “access” (DEI&A) strategy. Headquartered in Portland, Ore., the real estate private equity manager was also named a PE Innovator in ESG this year and in 2021.
What steps are you taking to improve DEI at your firm?
The managing partners of Green Cities are committed to our DEI&A platform and to supporting related initiatives through our portfolio and our organization. Led by our senior director of ESG, who leads our ESG team, and our DEI&A officer, who is an HR business partner, we seek to integrate DEI&A throughout our investment and employment practices.
Further insight is led by our DEI&A committee, a volunteer-based, firmwide collaboration. The committee – an active working group currently comprised of 10 professionals – represents multiple departments and perspectives in Green Cities and acts in a consultative/advisory capacity. It also generates ideas and innovation for the DEI&A platform. The committee meets monthly with managing partners in attendance to ensure continued senior-level support.
What results have you achieved?
At the corporate level, Green Cities is in the process of an extensive, voluntary performance management exercise aimed at establishing an equitable positioning for all our employees. Aided by a third-party consultant, we are reviewing our goal-setting practices, creating clarity around behavioral competencies, and fostering an environment of even greater transparency, collaboration, and inclusivity within our firm.
Green Cities is actively formalizing a talent recruiting and hiring process that seeks to mitigate unconscious bias and form the foundations of a more diverse workforce. We create skills-based job descriptions that mitigate potential bias factors such as overly prescriptive requirements around education and experience which often exclude diverse candidates. We are seeking to diversify our job postings and talent recruitment pipelines to attract a more diverse pool of candidates, and we are tracking diversity statistics through this part of the process.
More broadly, in addition to our status as a certified B corporation, Green Cities is working to advance a more equitable and inclusive business environment both in our local community as well as in the real estate industry. We are part of the Portland Means Progress initiative, a collective of over 150 local businesses in the area of our corporate headquarters that seeks to advance diversity and equity in the city.
