ICSC+WOMEN IN CRE Panelists Take On the Capital Gap

Women control 33% of personal investments in the U.S. and the European Union yet make just 3% of commercial real estate investments. ICSC+WOMEN IN CRE, a new event that co-located with ICSC LAS VEGAS, included a panel titled Capital, Confidence and Control: A Practical Guide to Investing in Commercial Real Estate that tackled that gap head-on, from the networks and structures needed to bring more women into deals to the hard-won lessons of building a private investment firm after decades in the public markets.

More Women Investors Will Require Stronger Money-and-Deals Networks

The share of U.S. and EU personal investments for which women account is expected to climb to between 40% and 45% by 2030, according to 2025 article from McKinsey & Co. titled The New Face of Wealth: The Rise of the Female Investor. Yet women make just 3% of commercial real estate investments, said Retail Strategies president and ICSC trustee Lacy Beasley, who moderated the panel. It’s a disparity that some women in commercial real estate are determined to change.

Beasley noted that Azor Advisory Services founder and principal Beth Azor is campaigning to push the 3% figure to 40%. Panelists touched on steps women can take to push toward that goal, such as building money-and-deals networks of like-minded women, lowering minimum investments, creating limited liability companies to help non-accredited investors pool capital and encouraging women to invest their own capital if they enjoy proximity to a deal. “You’re not going to run out here and make a call and find an investment,” said Greaner Strategies principal Ivy Greaner. “You need to network. ... It’s not going to happen by accident. It’s going to happen through a relationship.”

Raising Private Capital Requires a Different Approach

Throughout much of her career, Robin Zeigler has managed real estate on behalf of institutions and public REITs, including her stint as one of the only female retail REIT COOs in the U.S. When Zeigler left Cedar Realty Trust, she thought her capital-raising experience would transfer directly to the investment and development company she was founding. It did not. “I walked out on my own with this confidence of ‘I know how to raise capital. I definitely know how to develop, definitely know how to operate, but I also know how to raise capital.’ Or so I thought,” said Zeigler, now president chief investment officer and CEO of MURAL Real Estate Partners.

Before launching MURAL in 2022, Zeigler had raised billions in the capital markets. But that experience did not benefit a firm like MURAL that depends on private investments as much as she thought it would. In the four years since, she has learned that the private investment world speaks a different language, taps into a different business network and focuses on different metrics. Public REITs track net operating income growth, net asset value and dividends, while private equity keeps an eye on internal rate of return. “I almost felt like I had to start over ... and I’d been in the industry for 35, 40 years at that point,” Zeigler recalled during the panel. “It took me maybe two-and-a-half, three years to feel like ‘OK, I kind of got a handle on this.’” Since absorbing that knowledge, Zeigler has immersed herself in the retail, residential and mixed-use sectors. This includes a partnership forged in 2025 with development and construction heavyweight Gilbane to build a $316 million mixed-use project in New Haven, Connecticut.