After 41 years developing, leasing and managing some 32 million square feet of retail space, Patrick Donahue is retiring from private REIT Donahue Schriber. He handed the Donahue Schriber chair and CEO reins to shopping center veteran Michael Glimcher in early November and will continue as a board representative until the second quarter of 2021. Instead of relaxing, however, he is taking on another challenge. As the new chair of the ICSC Foundation, he is focused on energizing the shopping center and retail industries, namely by recruiting young people who can bring creativity to the businesses.

Or, to simplify it in a catchphrase he has been mulling, to establish a Foundation of our future. “It’s clear to me that what this industry really needs for its future is talent, more diversity and new blood and ideas,” said Donahue. “You do it through education and exposing the industry and its opportunities to a wide range of students."

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The ICSC Foundation is increasing its ability to do just that. The organization saw the COVID-19 disruption as an opportunity to place extra emphasis on its two-year-old Talent Incubator Project to provide undergraduate and graduate students with scholarships, mentorships and internships, as well as to add more universities as partners. In 2020, the Foundation nearly doubled the number of university partners to 45 and created new virtual initiatives like an online Student Retail Real Estate Certificate, a Retail Real Estate Case Challenge and 10 live conversations with industry leaders. For the 2020-21 academic year, the Foundation has awarded nearly 90 academic scholarships worth more than $320,000 to undergraduate and graduate students interested in the industry. At the same time, 100 students are participating in the Foundation’s year-long mentorship program, each paired with an industry professional. That’s up from 16 students in the pilot program in 2018-19.

The Foundation also has introduced the Launch Academy, an innovative and ambitious program that provides racially diverse college students with paid summer internships at ICSC member companies along with virtual learning labs and mentors. To date, 20 members are offering 26 internships, and 85 students have submitted applications. “If the Foundation was a business, you’d say it was on fire because of all the tremendous growth in its primary sectors,” Donahue said. “Clearly, the goal is to continue expanding these initiatives.”

Of course, outgoing ICSC Foundation chair Peter Eisenberg deserves much of the credit here. “Peter served as chair of the Foundation for three years and played an invaluable role in restructuring the Foundation’s mission to focus on talent development and rolling out the new Talent Incubator Project,” said ICSC Foundation president Lauri Novick.

Donahue suggests that the ongoing evolution of retailing provides young people with a rare chance to reshape a mature industry. It’s important that the Foundation and industry in general not only foster interest in retail real estate, he says, but also cultivate retail entrepreneurs who could one day bring new ideas and products to market on a grand scale.

The Foundation’s efforts are providing a vastly different educational and experience environment from the one that existed in 1979, when Donahue began working for his now-late brother at Donahue Schriber. Formal shopping center industry internships back then were rare, if not unheard of, he says. From an economic perspective, however, today’s sluggish climate is a lot like the environment 41 years ago. The only difference is that in 1979, high interest rates and inflation plagued the economy; today a pandemic does.

But even that presents an opportunity. Donahue said, “I always tell young people that you’d rather get into the business when it’s tough because you learn the most by working your way up from the bottom.”