The DC real estate industry came together yesterday to raise $520k for diabetes research at their 27th annual JDRF Real Estate Games, surpassing their goal and breaking last year's record.
For the first time, the games' honorary chair was a woman, JBG's Jill Goubeaux. Jill, pictured above with JDRF's Bill Parsons (left) and the games' founder, Savills Studley executive managing director Adam Singer (right), said being the first female chair meant a lot to her.
"There are not a lot of women in this business, and there are more and more coming in, but to be the first woman to be asked to be the honorary chair truly made me very proud," Jill told Bisnow during the games.
In addition to raising the most money, this year's games had a record turnout. More than 2,400 energetic professionals gathered at American University to compete in a day's worth of sporting events.
"This was the biggest attendance, the most money raised, and that’s really good news for people who live with type 1 diabetes," Bill, JDRF's executive director, told Bisnow. Founded in 1970, JDRF funds research with a goal of curing type 1 diabetes.
Many of the 42 different events were sports you would expect to see at a charity event: golf, tennis, volleyball, swimming, basketball and a 5K road race. But these games had a variety of unconventional events such as cornhole, foosball, noodle javelin, bouncy ball relay and spinning. Above, a member of SmithGroupJJR serves in an afternoon volleyball game in Bender Arena.
Speaking of unconventional, employees got to watch their bosses embarrass themselves in this heads of office relay event.
For the final event of the day, every company picked their biggest and strongest to compete in a tug-of-war tournament. Cheered on by a raucuous crowd, HITT (above) defeated Grunley Construction in the final round.
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We also snapped this year's games' co-chairs and co-emcees, Bozzuto's Manny Egoegonwa and Vornado's Sarah Dreyer. Above them are the customized T-shirts each company made for the event; kudos for getting most of the colors of the rainbow covered.
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Clark Construction, an All-Star sponsor of the games, took home the first-place trophy. Again. CBRE and Turner came in second and third, respectively. But like each of the 26 years before, Adam said the big winner of the day was those in need of a cure for type 1 diabetes.
"We raised real dollars that have changed diabetes research," Adam said.
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