Lucy Smith joins the Freehold LGBT board
Lucy is a Partner at HTA responsible for Communication Design, she manages the graphics team’s project portfolio and client relationships. The purpose of the team is to communicate ideas relating to the built environment through high quality, creative and engaging channels. She is a member of HTA’s Diversity & Inclusion team, specifically Women @ HTA and the LGBTQ+ group incl.usive which aims to promote diversity across the practice and the built environment. To broaden her influence in addressing equality, Lucy has joined the Freehold LGBT networking organisation as a board member.
Freehold is a networking forum for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender real estate professionals working within the real estate & built environment sector. Since its official launch in September 2011, the group has grown to over 1300 members and continues to expand. Freehold is a network set up exclusively for the real estate industry and its members include building surveyors, valuation surveyors, agency surveyors, asset managers, architects, developers, investors and property lawyers from both the public and private sector. As an industry first for real estate professionals, Freehold is the collaboration of two major players in real estate – international law firm Taylor Wessing and leading building and property consultants Tuffin Ferraby Taylor.
With the backing and support of the lesbian, gay and bisexual charity, Stonewall, the aim of Freehold is to address the equality gap for the LGBT community. The property sector considerably lags behind other industries in tackling sexual orientation issues. Evidence has demonstrated that people perform better when they are encouraged to be themselves and Freehold is there to provide support so that members of the group can feel empowered to do just that.
Freehold hosts regular events that bring the LGBT community together to network with other real estate professionals and to share concerns and issues as well as to explore business opportunities in an informal environment.
