Keller Williams Debuts New Diversity Education And Certification Program

A new instructional system will give Keller Williams’ agents a diversity certification made to aid them function with a more assorted pool of customers, the business declared on Friday.

The application, Agent of Difference, includes 5 modules with names this kind of as “Grow As a result of Our Differences” and “Inclusive Advertising and Advertising and marketing,” in accordance to a statement. The modules are digital and self-paced, and they are meant to give equally agents and marketplace leaders “training, sources, and tools necessary to tailor and expand a genuine estate small business to enchantment to a broader purchaser base,” the statement clarifies.

Keller Williams is at the moment providing the application to all of its brokers, but the enterprise also plans to open Agent of Distinction to all field users regardless of their brokerage affiliation. That really should come about sometime afterwards this yr.

The plan must in the long run support agents “identify ideal methods for functioning with customers from various proportions of diversity,” “learn about demographic tendencies influencing authentic estate” and “locate local community organizations to husband or wife with to develop your organization,” according to the statement.

Participation in Agent of Difference demands completion of two range, equity and inclusion prerequisite programs — dubbed “Unconscious Bias” and “Color of Genuine Estate” — which are totally free and accessible to any agents no matter of brokerage.

When the prerequisite programs are completed, certification in the Agents of Difference program fees $297.

“The residential housing sector is getting additional diverse and homeownership in America has an progressively multicultural upcoming,” Julia Lashay Israel, who prospects Keller Williams’ variety, fairness and inclusion attempts, explained in the assertion.

“With Agent of Difference, our brokers have obtain to the best tools to serve this at any time-switching sector,” she additional. “And it’s all element of our potent determination that the potential of genuine estate has option and promise for all.”

Range has develop into a escalating issue in serious estate more than the past various many years, with many stories indicating discrimination and bias in excess of race continue being a critical issue. Businesses have deployed a wide range of techniques to handle the concern. In 2021 for example, Keller Williams employed Israel to lead the company’s diversity attempts. Numerous true estate portals have also ditched crime statistics in an hard work to avoid stigmatizing neighborhoods, and some leaders this sort of as Redfin’s Glenn Kelman have campaigned versus methods that they say are discriminatory, this kind of as pocket listings.

In Thursday’s assertion, Carl Liebert, CEO of Keller Williams’ father or mother business kwx, argued that “we unleash unrestricted likely when we lean into equity and inclusion.”

“We’re psyched to announce Agent of Distinction,” Liebert added, “our new business certification that attracts upon the electrical power of variety to fuel small business progress and innovation.”

E-mail Jim Dalrymple II