After the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, protests and unrest erupted in Minneapolis and cities across the country, and addressing racial injustice quickly became of the utmost importance for companies across industries. Taylor Johnson immediately considered how our clients could be part of the ongoing conversation and reached out to Collete English Dixon, a highly respected Black leader in the Chicago commercial real estate community and executive director of TJ client Marshall Bennett Institute of Real Estate at Roosevelt University.

We pitched select real estate media on the topic of best practices that commercial real estate firms could take to address racial inequalities in the industry and presented English Dixon’s credentials, which include overseeing the most diverse body of real estate students in the country, being the first woman of color to lead a university-based real estate education program in the U.S. and serving on the advisory boards of several major real estate firms.

The editor of Illinois Real Estate Journal responded to our pitch within 30 minutes and requested an interview with English Dixon for a feature that ran on June 4. We kept the conversation going by highlighting the IREJ story in TJ TALK on June 5. And the following week, Bisnow requested comments from English Dixon for a nationwide story that ran on June 15.