I remember when NAR, the National Association of REALTORS®, invited me to participate in a panel session on diversity at their national convention back in 2002. I had never been to a NAR convention but had heard that they were huge with 20,000+ attendees. I was well prepared for the event and excited about the opportunity. I didn’t expect it would be a marquee session, but I also didn’t expect what occurred. Out of 20,000 attendees, a mere 13 would show up for my session, and half of them left before the session was over. It was embarrassing. I vowed to myself not to participate in diversity events in the future. Ten years later a sponsor of NAHREP asked me to participate in a session at their global conference about, you guessed it, diversity. It’s hard to say no to a sponsor. Ten years had passed and the subject of diversity at industry events was more common, so I agreed. This time WAS different, there were 22 people in the room.
