Page 20 - RE-NJ

18 MAY 2022
MEETING A CHALLENGE
Beckerman turns to climate, sustainability as next frontier for CREtech platform
For Michael Beckerman, the conversation began as an effort to brainstorm for virtual
conferences. Soon it would become a full-fledged epiphany.
That’s how Beckerman — the former public relations maven and, more recently, commercial real estate technology guru and trade show host — describes his discussions in 2020 with entrepreneurs Lindsay Baker and Brendan Wallace. As he recalls, the startup founders pointed to how real estate was affecting climate change, noting that the industry is the source of nearly 40 percent of all carbon emissions.
Beckerman pushed back, he said, but after hearing the facts from Wallace and Baker, “it was not even
a lightbulb, but a sledgehammer just knocking me on my head, in a way.”
“Like everything in life, I’m just such a late learner,” said Beckerman, who was incredulous that the industry on which he built his 35-year career was impacting the world in such a way.
Such is the origin of CREtech Climate, a new outgrowth of the conference, consulting and research platform that Beckerman founded
in 2017 to highlight the growing role of technology in commercial real estate. The offshoot is part of what he calls his “personal and professional mission to decarbonize, to get the real estate industry to net zero,” largely by tapping the vast network he has built during his time in business, including some 25 years in public relations.
Central to that mission is his CREtech audience, which provides
a foundation of 100,000 people globally and a space to promote the use of technology to lessen climate risk, he said. On May 17, CREtech Climate will kick off its inaugural Climate Global Leadership Summit, in Copenhagen, a location that Beckerman notes was recently voted the world’s most sustainable city.
He believes it’s a fitting choice to launch an event that he also plans to stage closer to home, when the time is right.
“In Europe, climate is table stakes. ESG is table stakes,” he said, referring to environmental, social and governance initiatives by corporations and other institutions.
“It’s not here yet — particularly in our New York, New Jersey metro area, it’s just not getting the focus that it needs. And my fear is that there’s such a confluence of forces ... on this industry that, at some point, if they don’t wake up, it’s going to be too late for a lot of companies.
“So what I say is that the climate crisis is the single-greatest threat — and opportunity — to ever confront the real estate industry.”
Beckerman founded CREtech Climate in partnership with industry heavyweights such as Fifth Wall, the largest venture capital firm focused on real estate tech, along with RXR Realty, Savills, Oxford Properties Group, EY, Rudin Management Co. and Logical Buildings. Doing so would have been unimaginable at
the start of his career in the late 1980s, when he launched a marketing agency and “stumbled upon” public relations. Even then, he said, he
had little intention of serving real estate clients, but he found himself doing so by the early 1990s when he was hired by the Bizzoni Group, the homebuilder.
He would spend much of the next two decades growing Beckerman
PR into one of the industry’s largest independent public relations firms and a key player in commercial real estate. Its clients included some of the biggest names in New Jersey and the region, from the Morris Cos. and Gale & Wentworth to SJP Properties, Matrix Development Group and Roseland Property Co., as the agency expanded organically and through acquisition.
“Like everything in my career, it’s really just making enough mistakes every single day that you hopefully learn from a few of the big ones and you don’t repeat them in the next version of your journey,” Beckerman said. “So it’s just been this evolution for me of understanding where markets are moving and trying to pay
By Joshua Burd
CREtech CEO Michael Beckerman has launched a new offshoot of his event, consulting and content platform for commercial real estate technology. Known as CREtech Climate, the new initiative is meant to galvanize the real estate industry to reduce its carbon footprint.
Courtesy: CREtech