MBA Announces 2024 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Commercial/Multifamily Leadership Award Winners

SAN DIEGO (February 12, 2024) – The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today announced at its 2024 Commercial/Multifamily Finance Convention and Expo that Pinnacle Financial Partners (PFP) and Walker & Dunlop have been recognized as 2024 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Commercial/Multifamily Leadership Award recipients. The annual awards recognize MBA members for their leadership efforts in DEI in two award categories: Organizational DEI and Market & Community Outreach Strategies.

“Now in their eighth year, MBA’s Commercial/Multifamily DEI Leadership Awards continue to highlight the top DEI programs in commercial real estate finance,” said Mark Jones, 2024 MBA Chairman and President of Union Home Mortgage. “Pinnacle Financial Partners and Walker & Dunlop have both shown a strong commitment to DEI through an admirable ability to create and execute successful DEI programs that have a positive impact on the communities they serve, as well as their organizational bottom line. I am pleased to recognize them and honored to present them with this prestigious award.”

The two 2024 DEI Commercial/Multifamily Leadership Award winners are:

The Organizational DEI Award celebrates company initiatives specifically developed and designed to increase DEI within the member companies’ leadership and employee base, thereby leading to a mortgage banking industry that may better reflect and understand its customers.

PFP is awarded for its intentional and direct focus on improving its organization’s DEI efforts. PFP's initiative, One Culture, One Team, encompasses four DEI focus areas, including, Intentional Recruitment, Associate Development, Creating a Great Place to Work for All, and Leadership Accountability and Recruiting. Through One Culture, One Team initiative, PFP has seen marked improvement in the diversity of its firm and leaders – who are now more intentional in developing diverse professional networks, partnering with diverse organizations, and connecting with more diverse potential associates to recruit them. By continually focusing on mitigating unconscious bias, PFP has seen a meaningful improvement in internal workplace diversity. Additionally, since 2020, PFP has seen a 243% increase in women on their leadership team and a 62% increase in women serving as financial advisors.  

For more information on PFP’s efforts, click here.

The Market & Community Outreach Strategies Award recognizes company initiatives specifically developed and designed to increase outreach, marketing, and products to attract customers from the industry's fastest-growing market segments.

Walker & Dunlop is being recognized for its innovative external-facing initiative, CREUnited. Walker & Dunlop developed this strategy to increase minority and women-owned firm representation in all assets under management (AUM). The foundation of CREUnited is built on improving relationships and removing barriers prohibiting growth and access to capital for diverse sponsors. CREUnited and its corporate partners are leveraging their platforms to provide channels of education, access to established professional networks, expanded access to debt, remove barriers to equity capital, and build partnerships with diversely owned CRE firms. Additionally, CREUnited has committed to investing $1 billion in transaction volume annually amongst its diverse sponsors and will continue to open more pathways for them to grow their AUM.

For more information on Walker & Dunlop’s DEI efforts, please click here.

MBA's Commercial/Multifamily DEI Leadership Awards were developed to celebrate company initiatives that were specifically developed and designed to increase internal DEI within a company's leadership and employee base in addition to market and community outreach. These awards commend the hard work, dedication, and creativity in creating exemplary programs that focus on achieving organizational DEI and improving the communities they serve. 

This year's submissions were reviewed by a panel of judges consisting of MBA's DEI Advisory Committee members, past award winners, and MBA staff. For each award category, the companies were scored by the quality of their overall submission, identification of a target audience and annual goals, demonstration of a tangible benefit to participants and the overall enterprise, and the replicability of the program. Innovative program approaches and potential success in broadening the organization’s culture through the values of DEI were also considered.

For more information on MBA’s DEI efforts, please click here.