Executive Vice President of Portfolio Operations & People, Macerich
Search every verified Olivia Leigh interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In a September 2023 interview, Olivia Leigh, Executive Vice President of Portfolio Operations & People at Macerich, discussed strategies for building a diverse and inclusive talent pool in the real estate industry. She stated that companies should first understand their workforce baseline, including retention and turnover rates, before developing attraction or retention strategies. Leigh argued that requiring a specific number of years of identical experience tends to pull from a homogeneous candidate pool, and she recommended that employers instead focus on transferable skills and core competencies, asking whether a candidate can be an "agile learner" or "nimble." She described this as a necessary "paradigm" shift to avoid a "self-fulfilling prophecy" and a "closed loop system." Leigh also emphasized the importance of management training that goes beyond technical skills, noting that "managing people is one of the hardest things to do." She suggested that employee resource groups and cross-functional initiatives can provide broader collaboration opportunities and help employees develop skills for future roles. She added that when employees see others with similar backgrounds succeeding within the organization, they may feel more invested and likely to stay and develop their careers.
“You really have to do some soul searching and think about how can we change our paradigm about the characteristics or what we think we want from experience in order to get a broader candidate pool because otherwise we're going to be stuck in a self-fulfilling prophecy; it's going to be a closed loop system.”
“The priorities in diversity really depend on the industry in which you find yourself and even within the industry there are segments that are more successful and have a more diverse workforce by nature of the work that they are doing, so it is really physician, know thyself; you really need to understand your workforce...”
“If you can see someone who's similarly situated to you and you can see the success that they've had in their career or the longevity that they've had in their tenure, you too feel invested; maybe this is a place that I can stay longer or develop my career.”
“Managing people is one of the hardest things to do in your entire career, and I definitely recommend management training that is not just technical training but also learning how to get the best out of the people that roll up to you and your collaboration partners.”
“One of the challenges that the real estate industry has is we're a fairly homogeneous group of people, so if you require 10 years of the same experience or five years of the same experience, you're going to pull from that same largely homogeneous group of employees.”
“We've really challenged ourselves to think about what transferable skills and core competencies a candidate needs to be successful in a job rather than insisting on years of the same experience, focusing instead on whether they can be an agile learner and nimble, which will translate to success.”
“Joining affinity groups, wellness teams, or initiatives like Mac Impact provides broader collaboration partners than your day-to-day operational job might have, and you gain skills that you might not get in your operational role, such as leading a team or working on a sprint task force, positioning yourself well for th...”
Olivia Leigh, executive vice president, portfolio operations and people at Macerich (NYSE: MAC), participated in a video interview ...
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