Taneshia Nash Laird Keynotes Walker & Dunlop's Black History Month Celebration

BETHESDA, MD — February 19, 2026 — Taneshia Nash Laird, Executive Director of Project REAP, delivered the keynote at Walker & Dunlop's Black Empowered (BE) Network 100-year U.S. Black History Month Celebration on February 18, a session titled "Empowered by Experience." This year's program, themed "Talent to Term Sheet: Growing Black Leadership in CRE," spotlighted Black professionals shaping the commercial real estate industry.

Speaking in a hybrid session that drew more than 125 attendees across its virtual and in-person audiences, Nash Laird traced her own nonlinear path into commercial real estate — from a record label and a celebrity design firm through municipal economic development, a Harlem entertainment venue, and the turnaround of a century-old performing arts center — to make a case that unconventional careers carry a through-line, not a detour. She offered practical tools drawn from that path: written advocacy as a way to open doors, strategic volunteerism that converts recognition into relationships and access, and the discipline of showing up to be seen.

"You are empowered by your experience," Nash Laird told the audience, arguing that skills in finance, operations, marketing, and community engagement are commercial real estate skills — often unclaimed.

Closing on the framework that anchors her work — culture, capital, and community — Nash Laird connected her own arc to the wider possibilities for professionals seeking to grow within the industry, and to the programming through which Project REAP accelerates those pathways.