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He also knew that, as a minority, the office was due for an injection of new ideas. The efficient and smart way of doing that is by promoting diversity of gender and thought. Singh did that by ensuring that women were elevated when he arrived.
Working as an entrepreneur in real estate before ascending to become the county’ s authority on property value, Singh saw the inequities in both the private and public sector and wanted to work to correct them.
“ We have 57 women in the office right now, and four of them are in highlevel management positions. Our chief operating officer; the second person in charge in the agency, is a woman; the person over human resources is a woman, and the individual running our commercial real estate department;
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a segment responsible for appraising billions of dollars in commercial property, is a woman,” Singh said.
“ Coming in as property appraiser, I knew that part of my job was to bring equity to the table for those who are so often overlooked due to their gender, race, or sex. We still have work to do, but since I’ ve arrived, I’ m proud of the diversity we’ ve brought to the office,” he continued.
Having strong leadership is important to Singh because the office of property appraiser operates with finite and strong detail. Since 2013, Singh’ s appraisers have valuated over $ 720 billion in total market value. That means that everything from your home to the biggest theme park in the county must be properly appraised. If not, the office could be taken to court for an incorrect property estimate.
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When he first arrived at the office, Singh did an internal audit of the valuation practices of the agency and found inconsistencies and issues. To correct the problems, he turned to those who were most qualified, and many of them happened to be women.
“ Each year we are tasked with balancing a tax roll worth billions of dollars. We can’ t afford to get anything wrong. So, I ensured that we had strong people who could handle the responsibility of our office. I didn’ t look at that individual’ s gender, I viewed them based on intelligence and merit,” said Singh.
Quickly realizing that he was sitting on a wealth of talent, he moved to promote women from within the office to fix some of the issues he found when he arrived. Often, we view diversity as another
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COURTESY OF ORANGE COUNTY PROPERTY APPRASER’ S OFFICE |
26 IBA Success Magazine n VOL 4, Issue 3 |