A Woman’s Voice for Women
AdaPia d’Errico has recently moved into an advisory role with AlphaFlow. She is a special advisor with the company, still working closely with them on influencer marketing and business development and promoting the company and its brand.
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That said, AdaPia experienced a big shift driven in part by the #MeToo movement. She found it galvanized her in a way she never could have imagined. It led her to make a decision to dedicate herself to empowering women to develop their inherent leadership traits and to overcome a lot of the barriers that are not only external societal and cultural expectations, but also largely internal: The voice of the inner critic or fears or things that tends to hold women back. She chose to work more closely with a lot of women on empowering them to step into their leadership roles that they have inherently and at the same time to work with companies to help them understand how to bring those leadership traits out in the women in their ranks.
This has been very strong for AdaPia in terms of the direction that she wants to take for herself and for her business. Having been an executive for the past several years in very male-dominated industries, AdaPia really understands the impact that she has had as a person, as a woman, on the company culture, on the direction, on the productivity, on the values and very much on the culture of the company. She finds that effect is prevalent with many women who are in management and leadership positions in companies, and she believes it is important that, as a society, we continue to develop more women and work with management teams, who tend largely to be men, to develop that further.
Why Real Estate is So Male Dominated
We can relate this gender bias to the STEM disciplines: science, technology, engineering and math. There has been some great research done by McKinsey who have noticed that women are underrepresented in STEM disciplines and that as math is a critical skill in real estate finance, you find men disproportionately represented. It goes back all the way to when we raise our children. Girls are told that they should be nurses or teachers or something in the humanities. They are not encouraged to study sciences and they are often told that they are not good at math. Consequently, they are literally directed in other places, in other disciplines.
Women in Fintech
From what AdaPia has seen in real estate crowdfunding and, more broadly, in fintech, there are quite a few women; still underrepresented, but there are more than one sees in real estate development for example. There is Eve Picker at SmallChange, and Jilliene Helman who founded RealtyMogul. Both are real pioneers - not only in the industry, but as women in the space. But this is more centered on entrepreneurship and technology than it is necessarily on real estate per se, and there are a lot of women out there starting companies, who need encouragement.
It is, perhaps, something of a generational shift that is occurring in the sense that real estate crowd funding is a new industry that is emerging during an era of tremendous cultural change in America. For the millennial generation where gender is less of an issue than prior generations, and because crowdfunding real estate is also a new industry, it fits well with a new view of how culture and society should be.
Indeed, there are a lot of societal trends being driven by the millennial generation and they are far more focused on values, and their values are around inclusion, and specifically with real estate crowdfunding, for example, access and abundance of information and sharing and knowledge. Companies that have a social mission or that are mission-driven, that are purpose-driven companies are going to survive the next generation or the next wave of changes in business. Their successes are going to be driven by millennials for whom having a sense of purpose is very important to them.
Goals and Aspirations
AdaPia has been consulting for years and that was how she initially got into the real estate industry when she first discovered Patch of Land – and what drew her to them was that they were purpose-driven. They had a social mission – their slogan was ‘building wealth, growing communities.’ For AdaPia, the heart and soul of the company was built on that and real estate crowdfunding was built on the premise of being an industry that was creating more access; it would increase the flow of money to people and projects who needed it and who were revitalizing neighborhoods.
Now AdaPia has taken step back and has asked herself what does she want to do with the rest of her career, and with her life. She loves working with entrepreneurs. The favorite part of working with them is in helping them actualize their vision. She remains focused on purpose-driven entrepreneurs, and, especially, with female entrepreneurs. She also enjoys working with companies who use her insights and expertise to help them understand how to navigate the gender disparity that is in organizations. She assists them to bridge some of the gaps that have occurred since #MeToo, where sometimes people – men – are a little bit afraid to talk to women now in the workplace. Of course, it should not be this way; it is the opposite of what we want as a society. We do not want any distinction between the genders and AdaPia’s mission is to assist her clients to build inclusive, balanced work environments and cultures.