BXP, Inc. (BXP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So just before you go on, Ben, I just want to make the following comment, which is -- so here's an example of a building that we didn't have to do any of these things. We could have simply leased the building in its current configuration. The units on the roof were not at the end of life, but they were moving towards their end of life. But we had a customer, a client who said, this is really important to us. And we're prepared to partner with you and that partnering with you meant that there were some capital costs that we entered into, that we didn't have to enter into. And effectively, they paid a modest premium to what they might have paid for a [indiscernible] existing suburban office building that didn't have that stuff. And I think there are tenants who become clients of ours who are prepared to do this. There are other situations where our customers/clients are saying, it's interesting, but it's really not where our focus is. And so I think we're in the early innings of the kind of change that will occur over time for our ecosystem of developer, owner and tenant-client agreeing that these types of investments are good for everybody as well as good for the environment.

Yes. In addition to the capital expense sharing, I'd also note that we implemented a green lease form here with advanced clauses around lighting power density, plug load density and Wellington very much partnered with us on that and how they design their space and how they use the building, which is another example of how I think landlords and clients are going to need to work together. And you're right, Doug. It's not every client, but I think we're going to have more of clients that are interested in this type of arrangement, and we want to be here to serve them. Transition risk management. So a few words on transition risk management. First of all, we have fully adopted the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures and have included TCFD disclosures in our 10-K and in our ESG report. So we align on governance, strategy, risk management and metrics and targets. And we make very, I think, strong disclosures in this space. We will continue to update our disclosures and follow industry best practices using the TCFD framework. Another important aspect of transition risk management is adapting to regulations, climate policies at the local level, including building performance standards. And we've been spending a significant amount of time looking at New York's Local Law 97, which was the first major building performance standard followed by Washington, D.C.'s Building Energy Performance Standard, their BEPS. Boston now has what's known as BERDO 2.0. It's energy performance standard and Seattle also has a building performance standard and Cambridge, Massachusetts, is also implementing a building performance standard. And what these standards do is they set either energy or carbon performance targets for certain performance periods usually out through 2050 with the intent of driving buildings towards Net-Zero operations. So our BPS compliance planning is essentially to minimize any penalty exposure through 2034 at the moment. So we've executed transition risk management planning, including exposure across all of our assets in jurisdictions with building performance standards. And we've proceeded this year with retro-commissioning of high-intensity buildings. So we are, at the moment, retro-commissioning 9 million square feet of our portfolio, working across Boston and New York and Cambridge submarkets, CBD Boston, CBD New York and then Cambridge, Massachusetts, retro-commissioning our high-intensity buildings. We're finding some opportunities there as well. We're advancing energy efficiency improvements in assets with exposure, and we're maintaining energy efficiency improvements in compliant buildings. We're engaging our clients and we're implementing green lease language to align tenant-landlord efforts in achieving whole building performance targets. This partnership on a new development or a redevelopment, repositioning like we saw at 140 Kendrick is great. But we have a lot of tenants that are in place that we need to work more closely with, and we are working with them to help them understand how we're positioning our assets for compliance with building performance standards. We're also engaging policymakers actively during building performance standard development, rulemaking and enforcement, and we're exploring alternative compliance pathways for the 2030 time frame. So our line of sight given what we know today with these rules through 2030 is pretty clear, and we believe we can avoid most, if not all, penalties. 2030 may require some alternative compliance pathways that we're evaluating at the moment. Here's an example of the kind of communication we're doing on performance standard compliance. We have this table of metrics. We turn over a lot of information to clients in the building that ask for it. We meet with them. We try to talk through what we can do together, how we can partner, what they could be doing in their space, how we've improved performance. This is an example of how we [indiscernible] performance improvement. This is for 100 Federal Street in Boston, Massachusetts. The energy use reduction, the carbon intensity reduction, water use reduction were all very significant reductions over the last 10 years or so that we can share with the clients, and they're delighted and we can talk through the projects we've done and they want to learn more about what has happened at the asset. And since we've been very active with our management, and we've been actively investing in these buildings and maintaining systems, we have a good story to tell at these buildings like 100 Federal Street. So this is BERDO compliance analysis that we ran internally. We also have multiple models we've prepared some with external support, some also internally. But this is our best estimate of the energy use intensity, which is the dark blue line, the carbon intensity, which is the green line and the BERDO emissions caps, which are indicated here, they're called out. So the cap steps down in 2030, and that's that step down of the cap. The yellow line that breaks off of the green line is a worst-case scenario where the grid doesn't achieve its decarbonization aims or the steam doesn't become any greener. So we are modeling best- and worst-case scenarios and planning for the worst case and working towards achieving the best. Our -- we also point out all the projects we've implemented at this particular building. From 2010 through 2020, we've achieved a 40% energy use reduction and a 55% greenhouse gas reduction. So very substantial. And that's a location-based greenhouse gas production at 100 Federal Street. So in summary, BXP is a leader in sustainability and ESG. Our leadership is the result of collective action and commitment across the company. Our continued leadership and measurable progress is the result of a long-standing commitment to sustainable development and operations, which has meant increasing ambition and stakeholder engagement. Our decarbonization and transition risk management efforts have really become fundamental aspects of the company's business and our alignment with key stakeholders. So with that, I'm going to pass it to my good colleagues, Blake Levy and Amy Gindel. Thank you.

Thanks, Ben. So what is DEI? And how is it addressed for the stakeholders that we have, our own workforce, our clients and our vendors. And so it's probably best just to start with defining it. So with diversity, we're really speaking to the distinctive features and qualities that make us who we are. And we want to use our unique backgrounds and experiences as a tool for problem-solving and progressing ideas is an asset really. And then with equity, we're talking about the efforts to eliminate real and implied social barriers and biases in our operations. What we want is a level playing field for everyone. And then lastly, with inclusion, we're talking to an environment that fosters a culture of belonging where specific needs are accounted for. And so we recognize DEI is not just a cultural enhancement, but it is a cultural transformation, and it takes time. And so it really is a goal that we want to achieve. So how do we get there? Well, in 2020, the DEI Council was created, and we started with creating a mission statement that reads as follows: "To promote diversity, equity, inclusion and transparency as part of BXP's culture, decision-making practices and business activities, while also providing a mechanism for positive impact in the community." And this essentially guides our strategy moving forward. But it also directed us on how to form the different branches of our DEI Council. And so as you see, we have recruiting and development our employee resource groups that talk to our culture and decision-making practices, the company policies will speak to the business activities. And then lastly, we have community outreach. And so -- as it stands today, we essentially have 39 members on our DEI Council after starting in 2020 with 15 members. Now these are passionate change agents and they're diverse in a multitude of ways, not limited to their age, their race, their gender identity. And they're separated into these different committees and employee resource groups. And so the committees are the Recruiting & Development Committee, which essentially focuses on recruiting, promotion, retainment advancement in the company as well. Then we have our company policies, which today is essentially focused on vendor diversity, but now are also looking internally at our own policies. And then community outreach essentially speaks for itself there on trying to support the communities that we serve. Now our 4 employee resource groups are the women's group, which is Shero; the LGBTQ+ group, which is Proud; the multicultural group, which is Elevate. And we're very excited to announce Valor, which is our veteran's employee resource group, and definitely launching that currently in honor of Memorial Day. And really excited for what new opportunities that's going to show for us as well. And so as you can see, the diversity doesn't just go on to the makeup and the characteristics of the individuals, but there is organizational diversity as well. We are diverse in terms of tenure, region, department. There's quite a bit. And the reach and visibility in each one of those regions was instrumental into attracting new members and new allies to the cause. And so as it stands today, over 1 in 4 employees are part of this DEI community. And when I say that, I'm referring to the DEI Council itself, but also the employee resource group members. And you can see that we're creating a stronger BXP. So how are we doing that? Well, there's new relationships that are being built every day. There's exposure to leadership. There's new development opportunities and new processes that are being developed. We're simplifying communications, and we're operating with more transparency. So all good things and moving in the right direction is really just inherent to the DEI operation that we had here at BXP.

So Blake, I'll be honest with everybody. We -- the impetus for all this was what happened with George Floyd. And that's when we sort of put our heads together and tried to figure out how we could respond to it. It's now been almost 3 years. What's your perspective on the sort of intensity of the effort that we have today versus where we were?

Yes, that's a great question. I would say the intensity on the effort is still strong. The momentum, it comes in waves as what I think that we have seen. And it was strong, I'd say, for the first couple of years, but the momentum is somewhat to a lesser extent now based on the programming that we have. And so the intensity of the effort is really creating new programs, new initiatives, new opportunities for people to get involved. Amy and I just finished a tour of the West Coast, busy in those regions as well because we realized that quantitative feedback is not as powerful all the time as qualitative feedback. And so we wanted to hear firsthand from leadership and from the ERG and DEI members on what the culture is out there and what would be impactful for them. And so we're taking that and moving that forward. And so the structure of the DEI Council is essentially such that Amy and I championed the DEI mission for the committees and for the ERGs. We are supported by various departments, and we communicate with executive leadership and executive leadership takes part in our activities as well. But the hope is that we can be the voice of any issues and request for change, things are going good, and things that are challenges coming up for BXP in the employment field. So we have that line of communication set up. And again, I would just say that this is making us a stronger BXP by doing such. And so at the end of the day, the hope is that the -- all the DEI aspects are interwoven or interconnected with all the operations that we have here at BXP on a daily basis. And so what we felt was the best way to deal with that is to impact the decision-making process. And so we're trying to provide an abundance of options to serve marginalized communities as well as just serve BXP in the greater good from various aspects, as you see here, from qualified diverse talent, existing employees, the opportunities with diverse vendors and then effective process for evaluating those opportunities. So we're -- the ERGs speak to our culture, where we have training opportunities for hiring and advancement. And then new criteria for selecting vendors, not only for property management, but also for construction as well, to make sure they retain our -- or doing our social responsibility for the regions that we serve. And so we have all these amazing initiatives out there. But last year, we realized that we really needed to hone it in. And so what we decided to do was to create 6 different focus areas or you can call it pillars, to guide our process, inform us when new initiatives come up and really create a mechanism for tracking progress moving forward. And so we realize that there is more effort on the inward-facing side. However, it doesn't mean there's less importance than the outward facing. Both are very, very important to us, but it is quite an effort for -- to treat the employee base at BXP, whether it be for maintaining the advancement in the company, providing educational opportunities or just engaging overall in the communities that we serve. And so we take every opportunity we can in order to educate our clients, our vendors and especially the BXP staff. And so there's a multitude of ways that you see that here in this presentation via showing on the facade of the buildings, flags, even in our elevators. We also internally are using every platform that we possibly can. There is our internal portal. We've done interviews, where we can show experiences from senior leadership and what their experience was coming up through the professional field as well. And then we have training opportunities for DEI introduction, becoming an ally, unconscious bias on a regular cadence. And the training doesn't stop there. Even our ERGs are being trained. Our ERG leaders, our DEI counsel leaders. We are trained as well to be better at what we're doing, to be better champions, to be better advocates for DEI. And through that, through the program, and you can see here we basically tripled or over-tripled participation from the inception of all these ERGs around this time last year. And that just goes to show the momentum is good, but we're going to work to increase it and get more participation. And so we have quite a bit of programming throughout the year where the cadence right now is currently one or more activities a month. About 1 in 4 employees are part of the DEI community. And so having important programming and fun and exciting and engaging program like this is important, not only for the social aspect, but also to make sure that we have that funnel that we spoke to earlier, or we're able to provide feedback and quality of information from the employees up to executive leadership. And so right now, we're just coming out of Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander month and Memorial Day. And we're heading into a pride month where we're going to have a parade. We're going to join San Francisco Pride parade later this month. We have June teams to celebrate. And then in August, we also have moments of quality day. So we're looking forward and planning for all of those opportunities as well. And then on an annual basis, we also have a company-wide event. And so we had a fantastic event with our proud ERG last year, also with Shero, our women's ERG earlier this year. And we also have quarterly ERG, all ERG meetings, and those are in-person. And then whatever cadence the ERG decides, they have online meetings and they do some housekeeping in there as well. And so all these programs together, what does it mean from a metric standpoint? Well, we would say that there's energy, there's opportunity and we have repetition. And I think the advancement here kind of speaks for itself. We are trending in the right direction toward our goal in ethnicity -- I'm sorry, ethnic diversity as well as women in the company. And that's from the total workforce standpoint. But when we look at the officer level, we're actually hitting our goals already with ethnic diversity, and we're very, very close with women as well. But overall, even as we look on an annual basis, new hires are fantastic right now. And you can see that there's DEI intentionality in that process, and we're very, very close to our goal with ethnic diversity in new hires as well. And so we continue to try to keep and grow our existing talent and also expand our pools of diverse candidates. And I would say that in addition to CareerSpring, Project Destined is just one way that we're able to do that, which Amy will speak to.

Great. Thanks, Blake. Thanks, Ben. As Blake mentioned, we were excited to kick off a partnership with Project Destined earlier this year with our SF team. Project Destined was founded by Cedric Bobo with the mission of building the next generation of owners and leaders in real estate. Project Destined partners with 250-plus real estate firms and trains 2,500-plus students from under-represented communities per year. And then our hope is that we will endeavor to employ Project Destined students in the future, either through the internship program or permanent full-time employment. And a little bit about the competition for those that are not familiar with Project Destined. We had -- our team did a deal pitch, and the deal pitch was to buy a 30-unit apartment building in San Francisco. We had representation from development, leasing, construction, property management from our SF office and also joining them are our finance and capital markets team. We had a couple of representatives from our corporate office that served as BXP mentors. Our mentors provided office hours to help guide and provide feedback on the market analysis, financials that included a PowerPoint presentation. So it was less about really the deal, but really this practice and discipline of presenting such a deal. BXP competed against JLL, AEW SF and East SF. And I will note, we did finish first in round 1 and 3, and I'll just leave it at that. But it really was a great exercise for our leaders in the San Francisco office. And I do have a quote, I spoke with Tommy Chan recently who was one of our mentors, and he basically said, "Participating in this program was the most impactful thing that he's done at BXP." So clearly, a rewarding experience for both mentors and the students. And our hope is, hopefully, we get to compete again, offer our expertise and really expand this partnership to other markets at BXP. Our Forward with BXP program, the community outreach committee strives to address BXP's social responsibility of supporting the regions we serve by utilizing the Forward with BXP initiative to create a legacy for DEI for under-represented businesses and their successes in our communities. Our goal is to place mission-oriented and or under-represented minority-owned businesses in first-class office and retail space with the rental structure that aligns with our ability to pay and an opportunity to compete on a level playing field with their competitors. To date, we have executed on 3 leases under the program. So CitySwing in Reston Town Center, which is a black and women-owned business providing indoor golf simulation; SEO in San Francisco, who prepares underserved students for college and career success; and lastly, we have a signed lease with a mission-oriented cafe, coffee shop in New York and the New York region with a target of opening in September. So really excited, hopefully in the coming year to continue to expand the program in our markets.

So Amy, just before you go on. So what I would say is that this particular engagement is very authentic to who we are and what we do, right? I mean, we could write checks to the NAACP or provide resources to some community group to do something from a project perspective. But our business is leasing office space and retail space in these urban locations. And so what I think we said to ourselves was, wouldn't this be a way for us to differentiate ourselves in terms of how we are really trying to put our best foot forward from a community perspective? But I guess my question is -- because I know the answer, but I want you to describe it. It's really hard to find businesses that are both set up for doing things in the kind of environments that we operate in and are interested in taking the risk, even if we're effectively giving the space away. So just sort of describe sort of the challenges there.

Yes. That's a very good point. Again, in our recent travels, as we're talking to heads of leasing, I think Rod Diehl had said to me, it is difficult to source and find and I know we had a partner at one time, Doug, and I think we still do to help source these deals. I feel like the deals that we've had so far, they've sort of come about unless we do have a formal as you know, a formal sort of online or a way to kind of apply for a program. But I think that's really our struggle, right? I mean outwardly marketing it, how do we source and really find a good fit for our portfolio and where they are and available? I think it's still a challenge, I think, for the leasing folks, but would love to find more opportunities. Our next subject here, I'm covering, is supplier diversity and I know Blake talked a little bit about that. But again, falling under our social responsibility umbrella. And in 2021, I think I spoke at the last ESG, our inaugural ESG webcast, we really focused on company policies and really changing and creating new policies to support this mission. The policies included modifications to the construction RP process, modifying our bidding policies and our bid approval form. And I think the real intentional add here was encouraging best efforts to include 1 of 3 qualified UBE suppliers in each award process for property management spend. So we really encourage them to source and make sure that we can at least try to bring, again, 1 of 3 qualified to the table. And just for those who may not know, UBE is defined as under-represented business enterprise that for us and how we're tracking this includes minority, women, disabled, LGBTQ+ and are veteran-owned. And as a result, I think, of this intentionality, we've seen a 34% increase in the number of UBE vendors from 21 to 22. And I think once we do a midyear check-in, I think we'll have made even greater strides and this really is the direct, again, results of our practices and our intentionality. In '22, we also created a depository relationship with OneUnited Bank, America's largest black-owned bank, in addition to we had an existing relationship in '21 with City First Broadway, who is the largest Black-lead bank in the U.S. To date, a women and minority-owned investment banking firm function as co-manager in our last 4 unsecured senior note offerings. And lastly, I think Blake mentioned, too, from a subcontractor in our construction contracts, we've started to collect data on a number of UBE subcontractors and percent of UBE spend for our CapEx, our tenant improvement projects and base building work. And we are still in the process of gathering the data to give us really the ability to set meaningful goals and should have a good baseline by the end of 2023. So this is a real area of focus. And I think, Doug, you had said this to me when we first met back in 2020 and started the counsel. Just the pure -- just talking about this, making people aware and when they think about procurement, and looking at engaging future suppliers that I think certainly trying to diversify our supplier base is top of mind. From a charitable contribution perspective, this is pretty just a snapshot, and this is kind of where we're a little more passive. We do, do, while we give and donate to DEI associated initiatives and firms, there is also a volunteer aspect and component that we do track. So while we're maybe giving money and writing checks, we have a lot -- some of this is interactive with each of our regions, which is great. We had a goal of 33% of all charitable contributions to be allocated to DEI-associated initiatives and exceeded that. And we had almost 53% on average across all of our regions. And then just kind of wrapping up here from goals. And as Blake talked about, we really organized and changed how we thought about our goals and really kind of created these areas. So when we think about what's filling sort of those buckets and what we're doing that they kind of check one or many of these boxes here. Just to kind of touch on a few, I think a big thing that we did this year was offer company-wide DEI educational sessions, including topics as an introduction to DEI, unconscious bias and ally-ship are the 3 that we're going to run this year, and we actually started and did the -- entered the DEI last month that was pretty successful. Under recruiting and development, we're focusing on evaluating platforms on a formal mentorship program. We're actually, this year, just really gathering again what we might want to present to the executive team and hopefully launch in 2024. But we have heard a lot, again, as Blake mentioned, coming out through the ERGs, we do a lot of informal mentoring. But maybe putting something more formal in place would be great for our organization. We'll continue to foster growth in our 4 ERGs, have a goal to deliver always effective programming, trying to measure that by participation and listening to our membership of what they like and they don't like about the programming and engaging employees just across our organization in our DEI mission. We're also focused on, as I mentioned earlier, expanding our Forward with BXP program and continuing the growth in our number of UBE suppliers that we do business. And lastly, I think this is an important piece, more in the governance and transparency as we're collaborating with our Head of Corporate Communications and a third party to provide more transparency to our DEI mission, our counsel, our ERGs, our goals and our achievements on our corporate website. So that's going to be a great addition and hopefully that'll be coming in the next quarter or so here. And as we all kind of mentioned, we're approaching our 3-year anniversary of the formation of our counsel. I, for one, and when I say we, a collective group that includes a lot of individuals, are immensely proud of all we have collectively accomplished. But worth repeating, we're still trying to keep the intensity and the focus up, our work is not done. DEI along with which is a subset of our ESG strategy, but it's an important part of what we do and how we differentiate -- how BXP is differentiated, I believe, in certainly the market. So we're going to continue to tackle this work with purpose, intentionality, authenticity and transparency. I think we're still always looking forward and looking forward to our next chapter for what our counsel will accomplish. And really focused on mission-critical work as we continue to serve you, our investors, our employees, suppliers, partners and the communities in which we operate. So again, thank you guys for the opportunity, for Blake and I especially to kind of highlight DEI and all of our work that we've done to date. So with that, I'll hand it over back to Doug for Q&A.

Thanks, Amy. Thanks, Blake. We've had a couple of questions that I tried to answer sort of on the way through the presentation, but there's a couple or a few others that have come through that I will ask our BXP speakers to chime in on. So the first one is really for you, Ben, which is the question was asked whether or not the political climate and the politicization of ESG is affecting what we're doing. My sort of brief comment would be, we happen to live in and operate our assets in areas, where I think that the issues associated with that are less critical. In other words, there's less pushback from a community perspective. And we are, I would say, not doing anything differently on a relative basis because we think what is being asked of us from a community perspective is important. Albeit, I would tell you that we have a practical perspective on what the issues are that are -- we are being asked to address and the ways in which the various communities are trying to enact either legal constraints or other manners of enforcing activities, which may not necessarily be totally thought out. And we are trying to impact those thought processes before the laws or the rules become permanent. So I don't think we're changing things. Ben, you should talk a little bit about the give and take between what people would like to see relative to the elimination of fossil fuels and the practicalities associated with operating in our geographic areas aka what the climate is in the Northeast. And most importantly, the practicality of the ability for the generators of power and the transmitters of power to actually provide all of the "green power" if it were, in fact, available to all of these jurisdictions. Because I don't think there's an appreciation of the challenges there. And we happen to be a great partner with the utility that is operating in New England, Eversource, and have a sort of a front row seat on the challenges that they are having with regards to those issues.

Yes. Well, I think there's 2 big questions there. I think the first -- I'll take the ESG one and the politicization of ESG as a whole. I'd say it's not changing our strategy at all. We're continuing to stay the course. What it may change is our communication. I think it emphasizes the need to be very clear about what ESG or sustainability or DEI means to our organization and be very specific about the impact and the why behind what we're doing. And I think when people don't understand the term, it can be politicized. And people can make it mean what they want it to mean. And when you start calling woke capital, it gets a lot of people excited. We're not changing our strategy. So that's the first thing I'd say there. On electrification and electrification challenges, I mentioned some of this in my earlier remarks. The grid modernization increases in demand are going to mean more capacity, which means more substations, more distribution, more transmission. We have not been building a lot of transmission in this country since the 1960s and '70s. And a report from Princeton University shows that we need to build at a rate of 2.3x, the current rate of transmission development through 2035, to meet our 2050 targets. So we need a lot more transmission to be built. And I think a lot of people underestimate the amount of development, the amount of copper, the amount of wire, the amount of real work and infrastructure it's going to require to electrify. Secondarily, we have local capacity constraints, one more handling with -- in partnership with Eversource in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where we're building a vault for a new substation, which solves a community environmental justice issue. Several real estate companies involved in this transaction, but we're citing it on our site and building this huge vault for a substation that will go underground, which is a great partnership, I think. That solves one problem, right? But the utility, Eversource, to meet their 2040 electrification projections, what they're going to need for transportation and building electrification, will need to add another 10 to 15 substations in the Greater Boston area. And building out this infrastructure is going to be very, I think, contentious in certain communities where we have to add these substations. It's going to require collaboration and partnerships with real estate perhaps with other owners to get this work done. But I think that the hearts are in the right place on climate action and wanting to decarbonize. But when you look at the practicalities of eliminating the last 5% of fossil fuels from buildings, either from steam distribution or on-site natural gas, you're having to dramatically increase the standby electrical systems to meet peak demand on cold days in climate zones like Boston, New York. So you're talking about 20% to 30% of system capacity just there for the peak hour of the peak day doing nothing but requiring the standby capacity on the grid, which is not an efficient use of capital. It certainly doesn't dramatically impact emissions reductions. And I think it's a mindset that we're going to mature out of where net zero needs to be solved on a building-by-building basis, so every building is fully electric, fully net zero. We're going to have to think more holistically about how we decarbonize the built environment at a systems level versus individual buildings being perfectly net zero and fossil fuel-free.

Thanks. So Blake and Amy, a question for you. So you both used the word intentional a lot in your remarks. And I think that as an organization, we at BXP has really tried being intentional in all of the initiatives that you described with regards to DEI. My sort of question is, is one of the pipeline of human capital. And part of the -- obviously, the initiatives you're dealing with are recruiting. Traditionally, the real estate industry has not been an industry that has been very hospitable to ethnically diverse populations. And I guess my question is, are you starting to see any real changes? And what are we doing as an organization to try and improve upon the future population at BXP relative to people coming into the industry that we operate in?

Yes, I think it's -- there's probably 2 responses there or 2 portions of the response there. One is in-house here at BXP. What are we doing to eliminate our own social biases that may be conscious or unconscious when you say more unconscious, right? But what are we doing internally? And that is through the exposure and through the training that we're going through and the participation in the training that we're seeing. So that is part of the decision-making process in that tree that we showed earlier. But then we need to talk to, okay, well, what about the pipeline of people coming in, and we need to increase that. Well, there's only so many different options that a bunch of our model is gathering employees from other organizations that have experience not typically right out of school in some of our departments that we have here. And so how do we provide more exposure to them to what we do here? I think it's going to be partnering, and I think, Amy would agree with this, it's going to be partnering with organizations like Project Destined like CareerSpring, things that we can do that we provide what's free to us, which is our intellectual value and our experience. And we can show that to them. So we have 2 kind of things going on here. One is to get the pipeline of employees in. But then once they're evaluated, kind of use that intentionality and we'll say the word, the intentionality, to say, okay, we have a qualified candidate here that is of a diverse background. And then we need to consider them for a certain position to provide the opportunity for them. Amy, do you have anything to add?

Yes. I was just going to add, too, I think from HR's perspective, as you saw over the last year, we've worked specifically with diverse recruiting organizations and it's our communication with these organizations, too, of what we're looking for when we want to source and make sure that the candidate pool is diverse as it can be. And also just tracking that and really understanding which our talent acquisition group does, is what type of people are responding and submitting resumes and applying for our positions. And what does that pool look like, Doug. So I think availability continues in some areas in our business tends to be an issue. But we're trying as best we can to widen that net and attract as many diverse candidates as we can.

Okay, great. Thanks. Well, I'm going to -- we're going to stop there. We've been going for about 1.5 hours, as I think it was our limit. And I hope everybody appreciated the intensity with which we think about and practice our ESG work at BXP. And we look forward to seeing some of you -- I can't believe I'm saying this, next week at NAREIT in Manhattan. And we'll be ready to answer one-on-one questions, if you have them. But thanks for your participation, and have a great summer. Thanks.