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Avison Young: Inclusion at the heart. Driving innovation through diversity.

In our third year of commitment, we continue to move the needle for women in commercial real estate.

CRE PledgeDEI

Diversity and inclusion are a big part of our strategy. It’s how we bring together the variety of perspectives, ideas, and experiences that drive widespread innovation and creativity at Avison Young. We know that having a diverse team helps us understand and meet the needs of our clients and the communities we represent. And when they are happy, so are we.

Commercial real estate has historically been a male-dominated field. We are being very intentional in our effort to recruit more female market leaders and provide pathways to senior roles.

We believe that diversity starts at the very top. Our Board of Directors – elected in 2024 – features three female members and two male members, all leveraging their unique expertise and views to help drive our business forward.

Over the past three years, with a dedicated focus on moving the needle on gender balance, we’ve achieved a global increase of at least 1% in the number of female employees – from 37% in 2021 to 41% in 2024. 

But still, we know we can do more. We’re also focusing on developing our female leaders. Globally we have 642 Principals - our highest designation of leader in the business, with a 13% female representation.

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are our not-so-secret way to bring our supportive, inclusive, and engaging workplace culture to life. And they bring us so much joy, and value too! Over the past 18 months, we’ve been working closely with these groups to develop strong, brand-aligned identities that allow each group to really shine.

Our longest-running ERG is Empower: our people creating impact for our women. The group provides a platform and resources for our female employees, Group members are inclusive of all genders – including our male allies.

In addition to Empower, we also have women at the heart of many of our ERGs:

  • Conexión: our people creating impact for our Hispanic community;

  • Folx, our people creating impact for our LGBTQ+ community,

  • Roots, our people creating impact for our Black community and

  • Pangea, our people creating environmental and social impact.

  • And coming soon: two new groups forming to support our Asian employees and our Neurodiverse employees.

Alongside our ERGs, we support the growth and development of our people, including our underrepresented groups through various initiatives including a company-wide, global mentoring program and training on unconscious bias and sexual harassment.

In 2021, Mark Rose, Chair and CEO, of Avison Young was one of the first of hundreds of commercial real estate leaders who signed the Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) Network’s CRE Pledge for Action. We continue to stand by our commitment to increase workforce diversity in commercial real estate – supporting the advancement of women and other individuals in underrepresented groups.