The Future Is Bright and It Is Here for the Taking by Julian White

The Future Is Bright and It Is Here for the Taking

Written by Julian White, DEI Scholarship Recipient

“The future is bright and it is there for the taking.” That was the major theme I took away from the 2023 BOMA International Conference in beautiful Kansas City.  The first time I noticed this theme was in an email I received from BOMA King Country regarding the conference.  I thought to myself that it looked like a great opportunity, but seemed expensive and I wondered if the value would be worth the cost.  Thank goodness I kept reading and learned that BOMA King County was offering a DE&I scholarship to attend.  I thought there would be many other worthy applicants of this scholarship and I wondered if I would even have a shot at it if I applied.  I was pessimistic that I would receive the scholarship but decided to apply anyway.  A few weeks later I got the email that I was given the amazing opportunity to attend the BOMA International conference on a DE&I scholarship and I could not be more thankful to BOMA King County for the opportunity and grateful I kept reading the email and took the chance on applying despite my cynicism.  

In these troubled economic and social times, it can often seem that the future doesn’t look rosy.  I have to admit, I even been fearful about the future of our industry and what will come to pass.  But after attending the BOMA International Conference, I felt a sense of purpose and optimism that the future is bright.  The first event I attended in Kansas City was the Emerging Professionals Committee Networking Forum.  If anyone reading this is feeling a bit down about the future, I urge you go to your local BOMA emerging professional event.  There you will see that the future leaders of this industry are extremely bright, talented and motivated. I knew we had a bounty of young leaders in King County, but it really blew me away meeting so many other young leaders from around the country in this forum.  The emerging professionals who will be future leaders in our industry give great hope that the future will be bright. In addition to meeting future leaders, I had the amazing opportunity to meet several prominent industry leaders who happen to be winding down their astonishing careers and were eager to pass on their knowledge to the next generation.

Sustainability is something I am very passionate about. As I wandered the convention halls on Sunday, I became excited and felt hopeful about the future because I noticed room after room of sessions that would be discussing sustainability.  I wanted to go to as many of those sessions as possible, not only to take in all the information, but to connect with like-minded professionals in the industry who are interested in the same thing. I was very excited to meet people from all around the country and talk to them about challenges they face in their market with regard to sustainability. Sessions like “Embodied Carbon: Significate Choices Over Your Buildings Life Cycle”, “How to Leverage Government Funding for EV Charging” and “Calculating and Accelerating Pathway to Net Zero” were all sessions I was fortunate to be able to attend. I learned valuable information from those sessions that I can take back to my buildings to implement. I left each of these sessions with great actionable ideas, but also I thought that if my teams and other building teams are able to do some of the things that were talked about, we can make a positive difference in reducing the effects of climate change.  We can all collectively be more encouraged and optimistic about the future.  

The keynote speech was about navigating your life in chaos.  While I wish I could say this topic didn’t apply to me, it would not be an honest statement. Like many others in the room, I recognized many parallels in my own life to what keynote speaker Jake Wood so eloquently spoke about.  He shared what the experience of trying to adapt and make decisions in a world that feels like it is going 100 miles per hour around you. Jake’s talk was informational and inspiring at the same time and it was great to be in the grand ball room sharing the experience so many professionals. If even half of the people there take some of the lessons that were taught by Jake, I think the sky is the limit for our success.

The conference concluded in the best fashion with the highly anticipated TOBY award dinner.  BOMA King County had three participating buildings including my colleague at CBRE, Patrick Hennessy’s beautiful building: Marketplace Tower.  Although the TOBY awards didn’t go as we at BOMA King County had hoped, it was still a lot of fun to sit and marvel at the amazing buildings in the USA, Canada and Mexico that were up for these awards.  There were buildings of all shapes, sizes and uses.  From 100,000 SF to over a million SF buildings, and spanning office to industrial parks, many amazing buildings in amazing cities were on display.  Some of the buildings looked so futuristic they appeared more like an architect rendering than a real building actually constructed. Our colleagues who are a part of Canadian BOMA organizations won a ton of awards with attractive and sustainable buildings and that gave me a lot of hope for the future.  Here in the United States, we shouldn’t need to wait until regulation forces us to make changes to our buildings. We can get ahead of the curve and start making the cost-efficient improvements to our building so they are sustainable and function at the highest level for the tenants and users.

My first BOMA International Conference was an absolute blast, filled with valuable networking, learning and memorable events. I am already counting down the days until Philadelphia 2024.  I left Kansas City with a renewed vigor to take control of my future and implement many of the things I learned, because the future is so very bright and it is ours as an industry for the taking.