Worcester Business Journal

14 Worcester Business Journal | February 6, 2023 | wbjournal.com F O C U S W O M E N I N L E A D E R S H I P BY TIMOTHY DOYLE WBJ Staff Writer R eal estate is in Samantha McDonald's blood. Both of her parents were real estate agents in California, but she realized early on that she did not want to be a broker. "It's a tough life as a kid," she said. "In California, the Realtors and the title companies handle everything, so anytime there was trouble, family vaca- tions were canceled, people had to fix themselves dinner. So, I swore I'd never be a broker." Instead, she has become a commercial real estate attorney at Worcester law firm Bowditch & Dewey, embracing her desire for bringing people together. "I'm not an adversarial person by nature," she said. "You want something. I want something. Let's figure out how we can both get what we need to make this happen." She has risen to partner at Bowditch following an untraditional career path, including initially dropping out of college and working in residential evictions. Now, operating in the still male-dom- inated field of commercial real estate, she encourages more women to join her, particularly from the residential real estate side of the industry. "If they can succeed in dealing with houses, there's no real reason not to," she said. "ose skills transfer really well." For the first time this year, McDonald is working on a development where the lawyer, the broker, and the client are all women. She has teamed with diversity and inclusion consultant Valerie Zolez- zi-Wyndham and broker Amy Stillman of Rubric Commercial in Worcester to find Zolezzi-Wyndham a building to purchase, in order to start an incubator for entrepreneurs of color. Her path to commercial real estate McDonald dropped out of college when she was 19 years old and started working as a receptionist. "I got pregnant, got married, in that order," said McDonald, "and had my first daughter when I was 21." e family moved to Worcester so her husband could go to graduate school at Clark University. As her two daughters got older, McDonald decided she wanted to complete her education. "Statistics show over and over again that mom's educational level is the big- gest predictor of how well your kids do in the future," she said. McDonald worked as a paralegal at the Law Office of omas J. Aitken in Worcester while she earned her bach- elor's degree in environmental science from Clark and worked toward her law degree at Suffolk University in Boston. She was acquiring knowl- edge on the legal industry as a para- legal and knew she could use it to get paid better as an attorney. e plan was to take over Aitken's practice, but business dried up with the housing crisis of the late 2000s as the practice primarily dealt with residential conveyancing. Instead, McDonald joined Worcester law firm Fletcher Tilton's litigation de- partment in 2009. She rose to become a junior partner and worked in a variety of areas at the firm, including corporate law. While at Fletcher, she worked on res- idential evictions. While she felt most of the cases she worked on were fair, where landlords gave tenants ample opportu- nity to catch up on rent payments, it was difficult work for her personally. "It tends to be one of those areas where it's a little harder to find a win- win. When the mom of a three-year-old says 'How do you sleep with yourself at night?' it kind of takes the stuffing out of you," said McDonald. McDonald joined Bowditch in 2018 and now focuses on environmental law and nonprofit real estate. Among her notable real estate proj- ects, McDonald worked on the sale of the former Saint Peter-Marian High School site to Worcester nonprofit God- dard/Homestead in January. e site will be redeveloped into senior living. She helped AIDS Project Worcester get into its Southbridge Street location when it had to leave the Canal District. Outside of her day–to-day responsibil- ities, McDonald serves on the boards of nonprofits Worcester Regional Research Bureau and the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Boylston, as well as committees for Music Worcester and the Greater Worcester Community Foundation. "I was on a lot of nonprofit boards, but I discovered that it would be better to scale that back as much as I love doing that," she said. "Now I'm down to two." Working toward gender equity in CRE Women occupy 37% of all positions in the commercial real estate industry, ac- cording to a 2020 survey from the trade group Commercial Real Estate Women Network published with the Massachu- setts Institute of Technology. In addition to holding fewer positions, the CREW study found a 10.2% gender pay gap in salaries and a 55.9% gender pay gap in earnings from commissions and bonuses between men and women. Only 9% of C-suite positions in com- mercial real estate are held by women, according to the study, which surveyed 2,930 industry professionals. e imbalance is even more notice- able locally, said McDonald. Larger national firms like the Trammell Crow Co. of Texas and the Tishman Speyer of New York understand the importance of gender diversity in their ranks, more than smaller local players. "ey have a different view on how important it is to at least look like they're paying attention to demographics," said McDonald. Stillman, the broker working with her on the Worcester incubator deal in what will be McDonald's first all-wom- an commercial real estate sale, said her firm, Rubric, has made an effort to create a diverse roster of brokers, even as gender diversity remains a problem for the industry. "I don't spend my days thinking about it," Stillman said. Stillman has had women residential brokers pass on commercial listings to her. Part of that may be because there are Opportunity for change Samantha McDonald found a niche in commercial real estate and encourages other women to do the same Amy Stillman, broker at Rubric Commercial PHOTO | EDD COTE Samantha McDonald joined Worcester law firm Bowditch & Dewey as a partner in 2018.

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