Student Success Stories Shared at Annual CREATE Celebration!

CREATE celebrated its 2024 student success stories last week at its annual celebration, “CREATE Works!”. Joining the party were students from the current Fellows cohort at SFSU. Fellows alumni, instructors and other program volunteers, and donors who support this results-driven, workforce development program. Four Fellows alums from the 2023-2024 cohort shared their personal stories of how the program impacted their career path and provided them employment opportunities upon graduation.

CREATE provides funding and support for college-level instruction, enhanced by mentoring, job shadowing, building tours, networking as well as a free career portal that connects students with employers offering internships and entry-level jobs.

This program is sustained by monetary contributions from the industry employers that it serves. Donations support and strengthen our commercial real estate industry workforce and prepare job-ready candidates for our industry. We encourage both CRE employers and CRE professionals to donate today!

Individual Donors – does your company match employee donations? If yes, please complete your employer’s application and double the donation to CREATE.

CREATE completely surpassed all of my expectations. Everything I was able to learn in CREATE I'm actually able to put to work everyday. It's not just property management, its leasing, its design and more.
Alexis Escaranio, CREATE Fellows Graduate 2021, employed by Resource Commercial Real Estate

I’ve been so impressed with the quality of interns our company has sourced through CREATE's training program; we’ve now hired several of them as full-time employees!
Rick Buziak, Swift Real Estate Partners

The CREATE program gave me that framework to understand how a building operates that I wouldn't have been able to learn without time in the industry.
Marco McCartney, CREATE Fellows Graduate 2021, employed by JLL

How much have we contributed to the companies that we've worked with? A little donation is trivial compared to what we contribute to these companies.
Cameron Maharaj, CREATE CRE Certificate Holder, JLL

The CREATE program prepared me for the job and then also through their job board I was able to find a job.
Jered Baker, CREATE Fellows Graduate 2020, employed by Swift Real Estate Partners

The best way to get an employee that's eager and hungry to learn more is definitely through the CREATE program.
Amy La, CREATE Fellows Graduate 2021, Employed by JLL

We’re not only training a CRE workforce through our partnership with CREATE; we’re highlighting commercial real estate as a career alternative in a highly complex, technology focused Bay Area.
Sandra Boyle, Cushman & Wakefield

Our biggest asset in commercial real estate is our people. Bringing in students from diverse backgrounds will help us ask the right questions and evolve our business to provide an even better product for our clients.
Mark Kelly, ABM

It's hard to come up with something that would make CREATE better. I truly believe they give you everything you need to get the most out of the program.
Cameron Newcomb, CREATE Fellows Graduate 2021, employed by JLL

Keep on looking to CREATE for a talent pipeline because that right there brings so much value to your company.
Christine Mann, Rockhill Management

We're on the right track with this program. It's fantastic.
Linda Foster, LPC RiverRock

CREATE's commercial real estate fellows classes support our industry’s growing employment needs.
Tawni Sullivan, Board Chair, Consultant, JNT Solutions

If you're not involved in this you are missing a great opportunity. Get involved, participate, contribute.
Glenn Good, Glenn Good Group

The amount of success I've had through CREATE has been incredible. The network that I built through the CREATE program created the pathway to my new position.
Kaitlyn Klinger, CREATE Fellows Graduate 2020