Open Arms: Creating more pathways to careers in commercial real estate

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Spencer Levy 
As students everywhere get back into the swing of the school year, we study a real estate program that's teaching a future generation of talent and setting them up for careers in the business. On this episode, we travel to Washington, D.C. to meet the mind behind that program, along with a corporate leader who's on the hiring and mentoring side of its important work. 

Cedric Bobo
I wanted to build something that would build a pathway that I could’ve used when I was young. 

Spencer Levy 
That's Cedric Bobo, the co-founder and CEO of Project Destined, a social impact program that works with urban youth and military veterans. He created the program in 2016 after spending 20 years as an investor and investment banker. He says Project Destined now trains more than 5000 students a year with a curriculum that features practical workshops and partnerships with some of the top companies in the industry, including CBRE. 

Toya Everett 
These students are expressing to me that this is the first time that they are seeing real estate professionals that look like them, and that is very, very important. 

Spencer Levy 
And that's Toya Everett, who manages that partnership as a senior leader of CBRE’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team. Toya covers Project Destined and leads outcomes for other DE&I initiatives across the company. Coming up: opening doors, raising awareness, and blazing a trail for new talent in the real estate business. I'm Spencer Levy and that's right now on the weekly take. 

Spencer Levy 
Welcome to the Weekly Take and we are thrilled to have the CEO and co-founder of Project Destined, Cedric Bobo, here today. Cedric, thanks for joining us. 

Cedric Bobo 
Thank you for having me, it’s fun. 

Spencer Levy 
Very excited to have you. And our own Toya Everett, Director of Enterprise Programs for CBRE up from Charlotte. Toya, thanks for joining us. 

Toya Everett 
Thanks for having me. 

Spencer Levy 
Alright, well, Cedric, let's go to the origin story, 2016. Let's go all the way back. Why’d you start Project Destined? 

Cedric Bobo
Well, first, it's an incredible industry, I mean, where else do you learn how to shape a skyline or improve your neighborhood? And so I wanted to be a part of that, I didn't know how to do it, and so in founding project Destin, I wanted to build something that would build a pathway that I could have used when I was young. I'm from Northern Mississippi, grew up, always wanted to become an owner, didn't know how to do it. Ultimately found Wall Street and spent 20 years in private equity, but I always loved the built environment. And so in 2016, I saw a movie about Detroit. I was amazed by how much development was happening there, and I wanted to be a part of it. And so I flew to Detroit and I partnered with the mayor's office, and I began training students on Saturdays–I took 15 high school students on Saturdays, and I trained them in real estate, giving them live deals to analyze, and they would pitch them to me, Shark Tank-style, and it really caught fire and got a lot of attention, and ultimately, I began partnering with firms like CBRE and Brookfield, and today, look, we'll train 5000 students this year. A big part of it is support from Toya and others at CBRE, but it really was about building that pathway. It's an incredible industry. We got to build more pathways into it. So the best and brightest see real estate as part of their future. 

Spencer Levy
I totally agree, and I think one of the challenges we have in real estate is that most of the times when I have my introductory conversation about real estate, they ask me how many single family homes I sell. I think commercial real estate, while it's an enormous industry, is still a mystery to a lot of people. So, Toya, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do, and how you try to draw more people into our business? 

Toya Everett 
At CBRE, we take a real intentional approach to attracting, developing, and retaining diverse talent. Part of that is when we look to partner with organizations like Project Destined, we really look for opportunities to engage through programing, because that's where we believe that talent attraction begins. When we're able to embed our CBRE leaders, even engaging our EBRG members – the employee business resource groups. They’re employer groups internal to CBRE that really advance diversity, equity and inclusion like the Women's Business Network Group, Black Excellence, those types of groups within the company that want to get involved advancing our talent attraction efforts. We're able to embed them as speakers, mentors within those programs, and that's important for several reasons: one, is that these students get to see commercial real estate professionals that look like them. One of the things that I hear most often when I'm on campus visits, I’m at recruiting events, or through other developmental opportunities like this, these students are expressing to me that this is the first time that they are seeing real estate professionals that look like them, and that is very, very important. And then we're able to give them, you know, access to career paths that they would not have normally thought of. Like you said, Spencer, you know, most of these students just see real estate as residential. I grew up in a residential construction family, and so that's how I was introduced to real estate. So being able to forge my own career path within corporate real estate to again, for this talent attraction aspect, is absolutely wonderful. 



Cedric Bobo
And Spencer, your brand is everywhere. I mean, I walk down my street, right on the street, I see CBRE everywhere, and I did growing up as well. I knew I had no idea how to access your brand and so that kind of energy is lost on many in our community, and so my job is very simple: it's helping students see their pathway into real estate, into great firms like this, and I always tell folks, my wife grew up with this guy, Masai Ujiri, who runs the Toronto Raptors, and he's won an NBA championship, but where he gets real credit is he started building sort of basketball camps in West Africa. And I always tell my wife, “He gets credit for finding tall black guys in Africa.” And I always say, like, “My job is very simple.” There are incredible, young people in the Bronx, in Detroit, in Harlem, all over this country. They have no idea how to find their way to you all, we're just helping them do it. And we're doing it through energy and through people and through storytelling. 

Spencer Levy
Tell us a little bit about that, about how you go not just to conceptualize it, work with big corporations, but you're really in the thick of it, teaching high schoolers and college students. 

Cedric Bobo
Look, the biggest challenge to real estate is that there's so much jargon, and in some ways you feel left out if you don't have command of that jargon, and so our program is centered around a couple of things: one, introducing the language of real estate, and then the most fun part of it is the deal. It's sort of teaching them the language and then giving them a live deal to analyze where they're on a team and they're competing pitching it, and they've got mentors that come from great firms like CBRE, from Brookfield, and others. And so you’ve got jargon mastered, right? You've got a team, you've got a project to analyze, and you've got mentoring. All of those elements then lead to one thing. And real estate, y'all all love hanging out with each other, it's amazing how many events there are to bring people together. And our students realize that once they're in the game with a mentor, there's so many people available to them, and they can start in property management, tenant management, whatever it takes, but they find their way into other jobs over time as their interest begins to grow. 

Spencer Levy
So Toya, you’ve got a big job and we've got a big organization. How do you make it all make sense? How do we take these students, high schoolers, or more often college students, and try to help them not just understand our business, but find the path that's right for them?

Toya Everett 
It’s going out to campus visits and recruiting events, and when they come up to us, they immediately ask about internship opportunities, jobs. And my response to them is always a question: “Tell me what you know about real estate and CBRE.” And the first thing they do is,again, talk about residential. So, it’s starting with taking the opportunity to educate them about real estate, utilizing things like, “Oh, the building that you're staying in–” and how that equates to commercial, so really breaking it down to them in bite sizes so they can help to understand. Then, asking them about their majors and what they like to do, and helping them to see that they do have a place within real estate in CBRE. And so we take a very strategic approach with starting with educating and educating them and exposing them. So,that's why it's important to partner with organizations like Project Destined, who has that structural component to developing students. It is our hope, right, that all of the students that we train, hundreds upon hundreds, through this organization, that they will all pursue careers at CBRE. But the most important thing is to make sure, to your point, that they find the right roles and the right companies where they can thrive, and then ensuring that they align to the roles where they can grow. 

Cedric Bobo
And the other piece is that it's got to be available early. And so we have high school programs, available seven days a week. High schoolers as early as 15 years old can take classes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, all the way through Sunday. Same for college students: we get 4000 applications every single semester. We don't turn away any student, as long as you're willing to wake up on a Saturday morning at 9 a.m. or 10 a.m., we'll teach you. And so for me, it's got to start early and be ever-present, because sometimes you see something on television that CBRE is doing something and you're wondering what that is, but there is no pathway to get the training. And so, if you apply to our program, go to Project Destined dot com, and you sign up, you will get an opportunity to learn some day during the week, and I think that leads to more students showing up at North Carolina A&T and Morehouse and Spelman being more aware of what the opportunities that is, so now, the conversation is changing from “how” to “when”, and that's, to me, the opportunities we have in the industry. 

Spencer Levy
Could you start earlier? I mean, I know we gotta start somewhere, but why high school? 

Cedric Bobo 
We ran a program for Greystar in Raleigh-Durham that was six to eighth graders. We used the same fundamental curriculum because whether you're in sixth grade or whether you're a college student, when you start teaching gross rent, net rent, not burning income, you got to start with the basics of what's driving each of those line items. So to me, we don't change our curriculum for any student; it's a starter curriculum and then it can grow over time. So, we have an entry level course, then there's follow-on courses like our HBCU bridge program with you all, where you continue to grow and develop, but to me, you've got to be consistently present. We have lots of high school students that start with us at Detroit Public Schools that rejoin us at Howard or at Wayne State, through programs with Related. And so to me, it's gotta be early, it's gotta be consistent, and it's gotta get you ready for a job and it's gotta give you the ability to have a conversation with someone who’s not pitying you, they're engaging you and seeing you as talent. 

Spencer Levy
So, Toya, let's talk about the recruiting process. HBCUs have been not at the top of mind. Is that changing, and what are we doing about it? 

Toya Everett
Yeah, absolutely, it’s changing. We take a strategic approach to ensure that we're strengthening and building our relationship with HBCUs. We're committed to visiting those campuses, a number of campuses every year. And when we go on campus, we're taking that strategic approach and we're engaging our local leaders in the markets. Because when DE&I, when we leave from that campus visit, we need those local EBRG chairs and co-chairs and the members, we need the local market leaders engaged with those institutions to ensure that that strengthening of the relationship continues. So, we want to make sure that it is not just DE&I showing up on campus, it’s actually the local market, our employees in the market, that are strategically building relationships with those HBCUs. We're looking at how can we come into the classroom to meet the students where they are? So not only are we bringing them through programs like Project Destined, but we're taking programming on campus as well. So, we're taking a very strategic approach to strengthening those relationships we have with HBCUs. 

Spencer Levy 
And just so, because I can hear my producers ringing in my ears right now, HBCUs: Historically Black Colleges and Universities, because I know they're going to ask me for the acronym. 

Cedric Bobo 
And let's be clear, let's talk about the actions you’re taking: we launched an HBCU bridge program with CBRE last spring. By this fall, we will have trained 200 students across 30 plus HBCUs in the foundations of real estate, where they’ve met with tons of CBRE leaders across the globe, and so to me, look, it's ultimately about talent. I don't know how to scale pity, I don’t know how to scale self interest. I guarantee you there are a lot more NBA scouts in Serbia because of Jokic, in Cameroon because of Joel Embiid. So to me, all you gotta do is shed a light on all of this incredible HBCU talent and the companies will go there, they just need to have a clear return on their investment and that's what we're showing them by taking more training–Look, the one thing COVID did for us is it made education more available to students. Look, before COVID, we trained students at probably 25 universities; we're at 350 today, 35 HBCUs. So now, we've got incredible talent, we've got training available, and we've got 250 corporate sponsors like CBRE who are ready to engage. We just gotta make it easy for them. 

Spencer Levy
What do you see as the pathway to greatest success within your program and what are some of the challenges you faced? 

Cedric Bobo 
Look, the pathway to success is very simple: It's training talent and then getting hired by those companies.Toya this summer has a project that’s an intern. She's going to think about our program differently because she has a student that’s an alum in the program. Look, we have probably 1000 students at various firms across real estate this summer. All of those firms, I guarantee you, will support us in training more students because the ROI is clearer pathways to talent. Look, most of these real estate firms, even the large ones, have small talent acquisition teams. Most of the players are on the field in revenue generating businesses. So, if we can help talent acquisition teams see more talent more efficiently, we will all win. So today, we've got 5000 alums, 250 who are partners, I bet 90% of them use us in some capacity to get full time or intern hires, and that, to me, is super sustainable. So it's more about building that. And then on the social good side, we have an affordable housing program working with those types of firms; of 150 students we've trained, 50% grew up in affordable housing, so again, helping them achieve a social good, but a business need–they need more people working in those assets that actually have some history connected to them, because they think about the local benefits in a different way. So to me, it's about understanding the strategy and making social good part of that strategy. 

Spencer Levy 
But to be clear, even though I'm a huge affordable housing advocate, we're not trying to just say, “Okay, move into affordable housing or move into a community that's at risk.” It's all, right?


Cedric Bobo 
Everything. 

Spencer Levy
Everything. 

Cedric Bobo 
The talent is needed everywhere. I think that the beauty of real estate, just like sports, is that the best companies attract the best talent consistently, which means you need more pathways into your firm. All we're saying is not take second best talent, but create more pathways for the best to find you. I would say today, the best don't find American soccer, right? They find football and basketball. To me, the best aren't finding real estate consistently. So we're trying to widen the pathway so more people find real estate as opposed to investment banking, other areas, where I think those are great jobs, but to me, in real estate, I meet so many folks who have been in the sector for 30 years; they've been at five different firms, five different roles, and they all smile and they have a massive network they've continued to build. 

Spencer Levy
So Toya, let’s talk about just the concept of talent overall. It's fair to say that talent today has never been scarcer overall. Overall. And I think the unemployment rate is about 3.7%, near historic lows. How do we approach the talent question, just big picture, and getting the best talent into our firm, and then how do we layer Project Destined within that? 

Toya Everett 
First, it's making sure that we're building an inclusive culture and start with retaining the talent that we do have. I think, also, it’s an opportunity to start developing talent for our industry through partnerships with Project Destined. So being able to look at those individuals in resumes that have transferable skills as opposed to just identifying resumes stacked with commercial real estate firms. But it really is, I think, about helping, working with talent acquisition and those partners to look at how we view recruiting just a little bit differently and outside the box and more for transferable skills and again, developing skills, skills for today and in the future. And by partnering with Project Destined as part of skill development and making sure also that our hiring managers and recruiters know about the partnerships that we have with Project Destined. Those that know about Project Destined when they are looking to fill their internship positions, they're coming to us asking, “How can we connect them to Project Destined?” They're telling their recruiters, “We want help identifying students who have come through Project Destined.” So that is very important to our overall strategic plan for attracting and developing talent. 

Spencer Levy
So, I think it's fair to say that job one is the foot in the door. Get the internship, make sure they're ready to go, their minds in the right place. But, job two is retaining that talent, is keeping them in the industry, keeping them engaged. So my question is, for Project Destined, once they're in, is there any additional things you might do or, if not today in the future, to keep them, not just upskilled, but together? 

Cedric Bobo 
I think a big piece of it is what you're doing today is storytelling, I mean, talent to me will be won by the storytellers who have a very clear brand and opportunity for students for how to engage them fully and let them bring their full selves forwards. I think storytelling is job one in attracting the best talent. Once you get there, to me, I keep using sports as an analogy. When you draft Joel Embiid, if he struggles his first year, you don't just give up on him, you have an entire team there to develop him. We want to be part of that equation. So, it starts with our initial program that's eight weeks that immerses you in language, helps you with the network, but we have courses on financial modeling, we have courses on affordable housing forces, courses on the capital markets, and so whether you're a freshman or whether you're two years at CBRE, we have students who still take our courses and they've been in the industry for two years. So to me, you never stop networking, you never stop developing your tools. What we want to be is an education company where when Toya says, “Hey, I've got an analyst who's struggling”, put him on in our financial modeling course, it runs year round. And so for us, we've got to figure out where students are struggling, where companies may be struggling retaining talent, and can we offer Saturday courses, Sunday courses to supplement what they’re learning on the job? 

Spencer Levy
So Toya, talk a little bit about this training. We have Project Destined, which is obviously one of the terrific groups we work with to help train our folks both before they get here and while they're here, to some degree, but talk to us more generally about what we do about training overall. 

Toya Everett 
So, you know, training overall as it relates to the foundations of commercial real estate, so not only do we partner with organizations like Project Destined, but we also have a commercial real estate bootcamp immersion for HBCU students where we actually bring the students into CBRE offices. We actually launched it last year in Atlanta, in Buckhead, and will host it this year in Charlotte. But what we're able to do is we're able to tap the leaders that are inside of CBRE from different business segments, different lines of business to also to come in to give them that foundation to commercial real estate. A lot of those students that actually come through that program actually come through Cedric's program. So, it is a good complement to each other, and when the leaders see that these students are committed to personal investment in themselves by going through our bootcamp immersion, by actually going through Project Destined and these leaders are seeing these students over and over again, they're top of mind when it comes to hiring opportunities. One of the things our leaders are so invested in developing these students and by having these leaders to come in and to connect with these students and sit with them and teach them, they get to see, like Cedric said, how bright and how smart they are–top talent. So not only are we giving them something, but we're actually walking away with something from them, too, and that is, like you said, you look at HBCUs and how they develop their talent and you’re like, “Wow, you know what, these students, they are top talent.” So we're very intentional about training and developing that foundation to commercial real estate. 

Spencer Levy
So Cedric, let's get into the weeds a little bit more here and just talk exactly what your program does in terms of the education: how many classes are there, what are the topics? Just soup to nuts. 

Cedric Bobo 
Our course is eight weeks. It's 45 hours in duration. It's courses twice a week, at a minimum, during the evening. So it's a type of school and work if you're doing Project Destined. The content covers market research, property analysis, valuation, deal financing, and a bonus financial modeling course. And the way we teach is first through lectures, you hearing it, sort of understanding some of the concepts. Then you do actual team meetings where you begin putting together a slide, a pitch deck, learning how to pitch and tell a story. Then you have mentor office hours where you get feedback on your storytelling and then you do a pitch competition every four weeks to your pitching, because I believe the way you learn best is learning it, applying it, pitching it, getting constructive feedback, doing it again. So they do that for eight weeks long and it's just continuous feedback. I didn't do a pitch in front of an investment committee until I was in my thirties. Our students are doing it, some of them when they're 16, some of them when they're 19, and they can do our program every single semester, they can be on Team CBRE, Team Related. You continue to grow and evolve and it never leaves you because we do it every single semester across the country. 

Spencer Levy
Just give us the numbers of how many people apply, who gets in, and what they can do to better their chances of getting in. 

Cedric Bobo 
Yeah, so our core eight week program is about 700 students every semester. We will get 4000 applications this fall and that's typical of a semester. Every single student, we don't have a spot for them. We offer them a weekend course where they can wake up at 9 a.m. on Saturdays, 9 a.m. on Sundays, and they can do a series of three courses with us, and that betters their chance of getting in next semester. So in our view, every student gets a chance at some training and then a smaller few, every semester, get a chance at the core eight week program. But to me, even if you get three courses, it’s introducing you to the language of real estate and it’s going to improve your chances of getting an internship. 

Toya Everett
Just going back to the boot camp Immersion, why it's such a great compliment to Project Destined is that they're able to hear about global workplace solutions. They're able to hear about those opportunities that are on the corporate functions side of the house. So again, it goes back to exposure and different aspects of the business and introducing them to leaders in the business that can serve as mentors, that can serve as sponsors, and help them to guide them on their journey. All the time I'm meeting with students that are coming through our programs and they're looking for that guidance from a mentoring aspect and just helping them to understand where they fit overall into the industry. I think it just opens up a whole new world for them. 

Spencer Levy
In terms of the future, Cedric, you've already had tremendous success with thousands of graduates and thousands more applying every year, every day. What does success look like, first for Project Destined overall, and then bring it all the way back to the individual student–what does success look like for them?

Cedric Bobo
Look, I want to build a globally dominant platform. I mean, I want Project Destined students on every corner of the world learning real estate and building a community of future owners and leaders. And so for me, like, look, it's been great. We've been able to do it in the U.S. and Canada, we've grown with CBRE and in the UK and Europe as well, but to me, I want to build a globally dominant platform, so when a kid from Baltimore wakes up and wants to go study abroad in Rome, there's a Project Destined friend that's there waiting for him. So to me, that's what success looks like, that our community evolves and grows in that way. For the student, look, I grew up just wanting a shot at a good life. And so I think what we're trying to do is just give students the best shot at a good life. And I think when you grow up and you've got mentors from CBRE, and you've done a CBRE bootcamp and you've done our HBCU bridge program, you're on Team CVRDC, and you’ve presented to Toya and others, like that’s just giving you a better shot at life because when you wake up and you have some big idea, you've now got a mentor to test it off of. I didn't have that growing up. I was testing it off my mom–that was great, but now you've got a broader network of people and those folks have seen you grind it out, classes on Saturdays, classes on Sundays. So, they come in with a measure of respect and regard for your ideas, and you can see it, you can feel it, and it makes you want to do more. 

Toya Everett
One thing that we're always looking at within DE&I, and you know, what I'm looking at is making sure that when we're investing in these organizations, that we're actually getting a return on our investment. It’s not about what benefits are these organizations providing to us, but also how are we tapping those benefits of the organization–it’s a two way street, and we're always looking for opportunities to take that thread and you start weaving these opportunities together. We have another relationship, like, for example, with Thurgood Marshall College Fund. But how can we weave what we do with Project Destined, Thurgood Marshall to create a more impactful opportunity for these students. So just being able to be strategic in saying, “You know what, we're not all competing against each other”, but to your point, how do we all work together, become great partners to each other to just drive greater impact, to be able to support and to be able to support these students? 

Cedric Bobo 
Can I say one more thing, though? ROI isn't a nasty word, but there's a time horizon to it, like, look, I don't know how to magically create a bunch of Black people that could be SVP’s of CBRE tomorrow, right? But if you give me time, we can build a pipeline. So to me, Toya’s not saying “ROI” meaning you gotta have it tomorrow, but it's an ROI over time, it means that there's a business plan in place. Look, Toya is on the phone with me every two weeks providing feedback, council, guidance, as to what CBRE needs are and how what we do fits in. So to me, feedback driving the ROI is what's been essential to our relationship.

Toya Everett
Agree. When it relates to ROI in terms of these partnerships, it is making sure what Cedric is able to provide to me, that I'm intentionally tapping into it, that our talent acquisition partners are aware that this partnership exists and they can absolutely tap into it because if they don't know about it, and they don't have awareness to tap into it, we can't even begin–forget a return or what we're investing–even though it’s there. You know, so many times we look at it and say, "Okay, well, they're not providing us or living up to their end of the agreement”, but like you said, when we have that open dialogue and conversation and really talking about needs and being strategic about it, right, you can then begin to see I mean, there is a financial investment, you know, that we're investing in Project Destined, but that also goes towards, not only our commitment, but also the belief that we have in what Project Destined and Cedric is able to provide to us. So, I do use that very often–return on investment–when it comes to our partnerships because the return is great talent, and that's exactly what we're after. 

Spencer Levy
So let's go back to storytelling. Well, one of the great books I often recommend, I'm sure you've heard of it, we may have heard of it, Grit by Angela Duckworth. And I actually was fortunate enough to have lunch with her once and quite an incredible person. But really, to keep moving forward. So, Toya, how do you try to simplify it for our new hires, our interns, or instill in them the sense of, they can do it, but there's a little bit of grit or something else there that they need to keep moving forward? 

Toya Everett
You know, my parents always taught me if there isn't a path in front of you, create one. And that begins with having a vision and determining what that endgame is and then figuring out who are the people, the resources that I need to connect with or bring in my camp to help me to create that path and reach that end goal. And that takes grit. You have to, I think, realize where you want to go, how you’re trying to get there, and figure out what resources,people that you need to connect with to actually get it done. So I think that takes a level of grit because there are going to be times things do not work out the way you absolutely want them to work out. But you have to figure out, “Okay, how do I keep going?” And that is really digging deep down inside. It's not always going to be easy. We're all going to experience failure and things of that nature, but you have to dig deep down inside and that is absolute grit. 

Cedric Bobo
Look, I think that adversity creates a persistence in those who are very successful. So I think what our young people understand, that they're not the first folks to face adversity, but you do need allies and supporters and advocates, mentors, you name it, to push you along the way. So when I think about the learning for young people is that this adversity, no condition is permanent, but what you depend on, we can also learn from as companies thinking about how do I develop great talent? It's not creating an ROI in one day, but over time. And so I think for the great companies is investing in talent and talent pathways and young people having persistence to work through these challenges and not lose and not give up on the fight. 

Spencer Levy
How do people get more involved with Project Destined, not just as a student, but that's part of it, as a college, as a company? 

Cedric Bobo
Well, first you can go to Project Destined dot com and you can link up with us and very easily on LinkedIn. But I want to just want to sort of highlight an example. Look, we started working with Darcy Stacom and CBRE back in 2020, and that was, you know, 10 to 15 students, that's now grown to 250 students. We can start very small with any partner inside of CBRE or one of your partner companies. We're always available if you want to engage, and look, the message is simple, like, invest in talent and talent pathways. The ROI to me is very, very clear and we want to be in partnership with you all

Spencer Levy
Toya, what would you like to see happen in the next five years for Project Destined, for people from underserved communities, to get more involved in our industry? 

Toya Everett
What I actually see is I know that our partnership will grow because we talk about it all the time. We talk about how to continuously develop just great talent and top talent and being innovative and creative in how we actually do that and just take that level of innovation, creativity, and problem solving and bring it internal to our teams. We have such great teams within CBRE, DE&I. We must have the stakeholders of our people partners – L&D, you know, TA – I mean, they're great partners and they allow us to do what we do and do it really, really great and will allow us to do it, you know, continuously do it great over the next five years. So I see great things for us in the next five years with, you know, our partners like Project Destined hiring our managers, our workforce. They're asking us for these partnerships, they're looking to us to develop these great partnerships. So the company is committed. Top down, there's a commitment there. And so I see great things over the next five years for what we're doing. 

Spencer Levy
Well, terrific. Let's end on that note. And on behalf of The Weekly Take, I want to thank our friends to discuss Project Destined, led by Cedric Bobo, the CEO and co-founder of Project Destined. Cedric, thank you for joining the show.

Cedric Bobo
Thank you for having me.

Spencer Levy
Great to have you. And Toya Everett, Director of Enterprise Programs, CBRE. Toya, thank you so much for joining the show. 

Toya Everett 
Thank you for having me. 

Cedric Bobo
That was fun.

Spencer Levy 
We'll have more fun in the weeks to come as we continue to feature a diversity of voices and the best experts in the business. Some highlights include the CEO of United Airlines on a panel featuring Hispanic business leaders and conversations with some inspiring authors, including an adventure traveler and a popular futurist with fresh takes on organizational leadership. We'll also revisit one of the hottest sectors in real estate: data centers. For now, we hope you'll share the show, and as always, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen. Also, keep on sending us your feedback through the “Talk to Us” feature on our homepage, which can be found, of course, at CBRE.com/TheWeeklyTake. We're very grateful to all of you who have shared comments and recommendations so far. Thanks for joining us. I'm Spencer Levy. Be smart. Be safe. Be well.