WIRED together: How mentorship led 22 women to a million-dollar investment

The duo helped found WIRED — Women in Real Estate Development — to foster mentorship and investment among women in the male-dominated and individualistic commercial real estate world.

“We believe we have a leg up in the industry because that siloed, self-serving approach [that’s widely utilized] is substandard to a collaborative approach,” said Vickers, collaboration partner at Clemons Real Estate, owner of real estate firm Select Sites, and co-founder of WIRED with Navarro and Diane Botwin.

“[Collaboration] just elevates the game. Everybody has to be smarter, better, and faster,” she said. “That’s what happens to this industry when women take the lead.”

Audrey Navarro, Clemons Real Estate; Sheryl Vickers, Select Sites; Diane Botwin

“There are a lot of service providers within the commercial real estate industry — whether it’s on the brokerage side or construction or consulting — but there are not very many mentoring or education-based groups out there to really leverage intellectual capital as opposed to just like a standard networking organization [right now],” she explained.

“It’s one of the biggest gaps in our market,” she added.

WIRED recently launched the group’s first collective investment nearing $1 million with 22 members pooling funds to acquire a seven-tenant retail property west of the Country Club Plaza, they said, noting the highest investment contribution fell at $18,000 with the lowest at $2,000.

“I think building upon [this project] is definitely our goal,” said Navarro. “Starting out with a small, straightforward, stabilized, quality project is Step 1, and we’ll build upon that to explore a variety of different types of assets at different types of price points and different types of …  ‘brain damage."

“[Contributing members] got to go through the entire process of buying [which means] entitlements, inspections, budgeting, negotiations, attorneys, operating agreements — all the things that you have to do to get to the finish line,” Vickers added.

“There’s no better way than to just do it,” Navarro said.

A lack of professional women in the commercial real estate sector and the resulting lack of female mentors to look during the founders’ respective journeys inspired the formation of WIRED, she said.

“Moving throughout your career cycle requires mentorship,” she added. “The obstacles I would say that I faced were just asking the right people the right questions and having that safe space to ask stupid questions. It can be intimidating. Having kind of a small group of women that you can lean on for their industry expertise is really important.”

More collective investments and property acquisitions are expected throughout the continued journey of the group, said Vickers, noting each monthly meeting is dedicated to a specific aspect of the commercial estate industry as well as personal development.

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