September 7, 2025 by Ryan Wangman, Matt Wasielewski and Emily Wishingrad

The Quiet Retreat: How White House Pressure Is Rewriting CRE's DEI Playbook

This is the second part of the sixth annual installment of Bisnow’s DEI Data Series, an ongoing investigative project that examines the diversity of the boards and executive leadership of the biggest companies in commercial real estate. This year, the project explores the changing political landscape around DEI and uncovers new revelations about how the industry is shifting its approach. Read Part 1 and Part 3 of this year's series, and to read previous years' entries, please click here.

It’s a precarious time to publicly support diversity, equity and inclusion in commercial real estate.

President Donald Trump’s administration has made rooting out DEI a mainstay of its early actions. The CRE industry has taken note, slashing and burning its messaging around DEI to avoid attracting not only the attention of conservative critics but also federal prosecutors, who have made clear that DEI initiatives could run afoul of their interpretation of the law.

“For many, many years, those types of words — DEI and diversity — were benign,” said Lauri Rasnick, a partner at Epstein Becker Green who specializes in DEI compliance.

That has now changed with the Trump administration’s focus on the programs.

“A number of employers don't see a benefit of maintaining that type of language on their website if it's perhaps only going to be used against them,” she added.

Photo: Bisnow

More than two dozen of the largest companies in commercial real estate have tweaked their public-facing language around DEI. Entire webpages and sections of reports have disappeared from the internet, while others have been scrubbed and sanitized to avoid contentious terminology, a Bisnow review found. 

Big-name firms that have made changes to their public DEI messaging include Cushman & Wakefield, JLL, CBRE, Hines, Prologis, BXP, BlackRock, Citigroup, Bank of America, U.S. Bancorp and Goldman Sachs. Bisnow requested interviews with each of these firms, but none agreed to participate. 

“It's a headline risk,” said Mandi Wedin, head of Feroce Real Estate Advisors. “If you don't want to have the risk of being targeted by the administration because of a report or a tweet or something that triggers someone, you don't use the words that are going to set off the trigger.” 

In a July 29 memo, Attorney General Pam Bondi ratcheted up the administration’s pressure campaign against DEI initiatives, outlining what is and isn’t permitted for companies receiving federal funding while telling private employers to “review this guidance carefully to ensure all programs comply with their legal obligations.”

The memo flagged “proxy discrimination,” noting that even neutral criteria, like “cultural competence” or geographic targeting, can violate federal law if applied in ways that advantage or disadvantage groups based on protected characteristics.

While not legally binding, the memo offered the clearest view yet into what steps companies can take to avoid catching the critical eye of the Trump administration. It could also provide a basis for lawsuits from employees, shareholders and the government.

“It's one of the first documents that really defines what this administration deems to be unlawful DEI,” Rasnick said. “That term has been used quite a bit, but now we have this document that is defining particular actions and programs that it would deem to be illegal DEI.” 

While most firms had changed their messaging around DEI prior to Bondi’s memo at the end of July, spokespeople for multiple large real estate companies pointed to the guidance as the framework under which they were now operating. 

“The majority of companies, especially the big ones, are shifting — there's a repositioning and a reframing,” said Melina Cordero, a former CBRE executive who now runs consultancy P20 Leadership. 

“The majority of responses have been: ‘The E-word has become a trigger word, so we're going to remove “equity.” We're going to replace it with “culture.” “Diversity” has become a trigger word, so we're going to really focus on “inclusion.”’”

Cushman & Wakefield, a brokerage with 52,000 employees worldwide, went from using the word “diversity” at least 16 times on its impact page in March to just once by August. What was once a dedicated DEI page now redirects to a page about inclusive impact.

It also reevaluated how it is positioning its resource groups, a step several companies have taken. Cushman still lists nine groups for underrepresented communities on its website, but it removed mention of their role in advancing the company’s DEI strategy. 

“A number of companies are maintaining [resource groups], and for the companies that maintain them, they really need to take a careful look at them and make sure that they are open to everybody, not be restricted to only people within a particular demographic group,” Rasnick said. 

JLL, which has 112,000 employees globally, changed the wording atop its site from “we believe a diverse and inclusive culture is one where everyone succeeds” to “we’re committed to building a culture where differences are valued and everyone is empowered to thrive.” It also wiped all mention of its business resource groups and erased several examples of recognition it had received, including four straight years on Forbes’ America’s Best Employers for Diversity list.

Cushman & Wakefield and JLL both didn’t respond to several requests for comment. 

Hines, a global development firm with more than $90B in assets under management, overhauled its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion webpage sometime after mid-April, eliminating language about the value of diversity and replacing it with vague references to providing an “inclusive environment” for all. Half a dozen mentions of the words “diverse” or “diversity” have been eliminated.

The firm went from telling visitors to its webpage that it was “dedicated to attracting, developing, and promoting a talented, diverse, and multicultural workforce” to informing them that OneHines operates under three principles: “Belonging and Balance for People,” “Magnetic Places to Thrive” and “Collaboration with Partners for Better Outcomes.”

A section on the page from as recently as April talked about how diversity made for a stronger workforce and said that Hines was committed to “improving gender and ethnic representation.” That section has since been removed, although the developer still lists the same employee resource groups that it had a year earlier.  

Hines declined a request for comment.

Publicly traded companies have to walk a different line. Many faced pressure after 2020 from investors and regulators to take action on diversity, but major players in the sector have tweaked the language and extent of their transparency.

The largest publicly traded office owner with more than 53M SF of properties, BXP, didn’t include any mention of DEI in its 84-page Sustainability & Impact Report this year after including the initialism 28 times in last year's report. It also removed mentions of a DEI-focused newsletter that the REIT said it was launching in 2024, as well as mentions of its once-42-member DEI Council.

The company is one of many REITs to change the header on its DEI-focused page in its annual report. The company’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion page was rebranded to Belonging & Impact this year

BXP didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In some cases, firms expect they will face lawsuits for simultaneously doing too much and too little, said Wedin, who also founded the Washington, D.C.-based Commercial Real Estate Diversity Equity and Inclusion Advisory Board.

The city of Boston, for example, mandates that developers applying for many types of proposals detail their plans to include a diverse slate of participation across the project workforce, management, contractors and vendors.

New York City’s housing department requires developers of large projects to seek out minority- and women-owned businesses to contract with, and Chicago requires that all firms looking to do business with the city submit a Business Diversity Program report. 

It is unclear whether such requirements would run up against the Department of Justice's recommendations, including its warning against any types of diversity quotas in hiring or vendor selection. 

“They're auditing that to see where they are, because they recognize they're going to probably get sued on both sides,” Wedin said.

W.P. Carey, a REIT that owns 178M SF of industrial, warehouse and retail real estate, deleted its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion page and the subsequent page highlighting its DEI initiatives, including a firmwide DEI training, in its most recent report.

A statement that said, “We believe in the power of diversification, and a diverse workforce is no exception,” was deleted, as was information on the company’s DEI Advisory Committee.

In its objective to “consider diversity,” when reviewing independent board members, the REIT deleted language that it would consider “gender, race, age, ethnicity and national origin” and replaced those criteria with “among other things.” 

W.P. Carey didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Prologis, the world’s largest industrial REIT, similarly replaced last year’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging section with one titled Culture and Talent in its annual report, released in June.

The old page highlighted the REIT’s efforts to increase diversity in its workforce and among its suppliers, along with cultural awareness campaigns and employee training programs. The new page strips out most of those details but says that Prologis casts “a wide net” to bring in talent and says it “support[s]” cultural celebration months and employee-led resource groups, which are “open to all employees.”

Prologis said in a statement that it continues to provide public updates on its “unique and inclusive workspace culture, including information on workforce demographics, employee engagement and employee resource groups.”

Investment giants like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo have all made shifts to their public-facing language around DEI to tone down commitments, avoid words that may draw scrutiny or otherwise walk back diversity commitments. When explaining the changes to staff, shifting federal policy is frequently cited. 

BlackRock in March axed its diversity goals and shifted employees focused on DEI efforts into its talent and culture team. Michelle Gadsden-Williams shifted roles from BlackRock’s global head of DEI to its co-lead of global talent and culture. 

The firm also removed a 2023 diversity-focused report titled Together As One from its website, but not before it was held up as an example of corporate America’s “lame attempts to dress up DEI” in a February New York Post article. 

The company also deleted language from its Global Talent and Culture page about having an inclusive culture.

A spokesperson for BlackRock declined to comment on the changes to its site. But in an internal memo to staff in February, senior leadership said that executive orders from the White House necessitated a review of corporate policy. 

“Recently, there have been a number of significant changes to the U.S. legal and policy environment related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) that apply to many companies, including BlackRock. In light of this, we are conducting an ongoing review of our global practices,” executives wrote in the memo, which went on to announce specific policy changes.

A year ago, Citi’s dedicated DEI page used the word “diversity” seven times. Today, the page is gone, replaced by a section called People, Engagement & Inclusion that makes no mention of diversity.

In response to a request for comment, a Citi spokesperson shared a Feb. 20 note to staff from CEO Jane Fraser that outlined the bank’s evolving DEI strategy. The changes included the elimination of representation goals, ending an internal policy that required a diverse slate of candidates to be interviewed for open positions, and the rebranding of the company’s DEI team.

“The recent changes in U.S. federal government policy, including new requirements that apply to all federal contractors, call for changes to some of the global strategies and programs we’ve used to attract and support colleagues from various backgrounds,” Fraser wrote.

These types of changes are widespread in the financial corner of commercial real estate. Bank of America no longer tells employees to “bring their whole selves to work,” and its new landing page has stripped any use of the term “diversity.” A section titled “Our commitment starts at the top,” which outlined training programs for senior leaders, is gone. 

The bank officially scrapped its diversity goals in February. 

Commercial real estate firms, banks and investment firms are part of the broader cultural shift happening, with major retailers like Target and Walmart rolling back DEI efforts in recent months, along with staples like IBM and UnitedHealth Group.

But the tactic, while widespread, is ultimately shortsighted, Cordero said. 

The Brookings Institution found in a 2018 analysis that less than half the country will identify as white by 2045. The majority of Americans under 40 will be nonwhite by 2033, Brookings found.  

There is also a significant, positive financial impact for companies with high levels of ethnic and gender diversity on executive teams, according to a 2023 McKinsey & Co. report. It found that companies in the top quartile of ethnic and gender diversity had a 39% increased likelihood of business outperformance compared to the companies in the bottom quartile. 

How firms market themselves to new and prospective talent will have to shift with the demographics, and companies today are moving in the wrong direction, Cordero said.

“It's kind of like out of sight, out of mind. Until it gets here, and all of a sudden our industry cannot hire because the 50% of Gen Z that identifies as nonwhite takes one look at the office and goes, ‘No, thank you,’” she said. “We’re going to have a big talent problem.”