Avison Young: Standing Up for Inclusion

Avison Young has been partnering with CREW for years as a sponsor of the annual CREW Network Convention and as one of the first organizations to sign the CRE Pledge for Action. Since signing the pledge, Avison Young has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the advancement of women and other individuals in underrepresented groups and taken several actions in furtherance of its commitment.  

This pledge is a commitment to six goals: 

1) Partner with CREW Network to support our mission to advance women and begin your efforts now to make change.  

We focus our efforts on education, development, culture and standards for sustainable, long-term mindset and behavioral change. We are taking intentional, deliberate actions across the firm to demonstrate our commitment to DEI.  

While our industry as a whole is taking steps to make positive change, we are especially proud of our accomplishments at Avison Young. For example, over the last 13 months, 5 of the 7 new Managing Directors that we have hired in North America have been women. 

We continue to work through the implementation and improvement phase of our DEI Action Plan for Change that was approved by our Executive Committee in July/August 2020, to continually find new ways to improve and further DEI at the firm.  

2) Close the compensation gap in our industry by conducting a pay equity study in your company.

Avison Young is committed to pay equity and has been working toward ensuring equitable pay practices for the past several years. As part of those efforts, Avison Young hired a Compensation Manager to, among other things, standardize pay structures and review any compensation arrangements that fell outside of the structure. Additionally, Avison Young engaged an external consulting firm that specializes in pay equity analysis to review its pay practices. Avison Young will continue to review, monitor, and adjust its pay practices going forward to ensure equitable pay for equal work. 

3) Increase inclusion in your company through senior executive sponsorship of women and/or other individuals in underrepresented groups within the company.

Our senior executives have taken action to foster inclusivity for underrepresented groups within AY: 

• Our commitment to DEI starts with Mark Rose, our CEO who remains unwavering in his dedication to create an inclusive environment for all employees and clients, exemplified by being an early adopter of the CREW Pledge in 2021. 

• Robert Slaughter, Board Member, Senior Advisor and Legal Counsel, along with Nicole White, Executive Committee Member, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, co-founded the Black Professionals Resource Group and have overseen its leadership since its inception in 2020.  

• Pam Mazza, Executive Committee Member and Global Chief Human Resources Officer, has been the Executive Sponsor of our Global DEI Advisory Council since its inception in 2020 and leads the pay equity study. 

​We also provide opportunities for all of our senior leadership to sponsor and/or mentor underrepresented individuals through our global mentorship program which has approximately 70% female/diverse mentee representation. 

4) Advance women to your company's top roles to achieve gender diversity in leadership.

Avison Young currently has one of the most diverse leadership teams in the industry with 25% female representation on our Board and 26% on our Executive Committee. Our recently announced Principal class is 30% female.  

Avison Young has made deliberate efforts to increase both people of color and women’s representation among our senior and board ranks - 47% of the US Executive Committee are women; 32% of Global EC are women and/or people of color and 50% of Board of Directors is comprised of women and people of color. 

5) Increase diversity in your company and in the industry through intentional recruiting and hiring of individuals from diverese backgrounds.

Avison young holds all senior leadership accountable to ensuring a diverse candidate pool is considered as part of a competitive selection process for all new hires.  We also work to include members of underrepresented groups as part of every interview team, whenever possible. Applicant tracking results from 2022 have been established as a baseline and will be used to monitor progress on an annual basis going forward. 

We also have formal relationships with REEC and Summer Search to assist in sourcing diverse candidates, in addition to retaining search firms focused on identifying diverse talent for specific positions. 

6) Implement accountability strategies in your company to measure progress.

We have goals that are specified in each leader's annual Goals & Objectives that ties a portion of their variable compensation to achieving DEI commitments.  

We are also implementing a DEI dashboard to track relevant metrics on a biannual basis and will share the data across the organization to facilitate transparency and ensure ongoing progress.