Spotlighting industry achievers under the age of 40 that are forging new paths and pushing the envelope.
The Future Leaders in Real Estate Award spotlights emerging leaders who have demonstrated exceptional leadership skills and a commitment to pushing the envelope in the real estate industry. Inman celebrates the next generation of visionaries who are forging new paths, introducing transformative ideas, and making significant contributions to the evolution of real estate practices.
The 2026 Inman Future Leaders in Real Estate
Agents, Teams, and Brokers
Charlie Stalle
President, Keller William’s Milwaukee
Charlie lives by one rule: "The world is run by those who show up." Nine years into leading KW MKE, the results speak for themselves.
He has grown the organization from the ground up — now more than 700 agents across seven Wisconsin offices, home to seven of the top 10 agent teams in the MLS. His office has held a top 1% profitability ranking among all KW locations nationwide year after year.
Off the numbers, Charlie is a Milwaukee Business Journal 40 Under 40 honoree who sits on the boards of the Boys & Girls Club of Milwaukee, Acts Housing, and his hometown's Business Improvement District in Whitefish Bay. He coaches his four kids on weekends with the same energy he brings to the office. Inman is proud to name him a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Jessica Souza
Broker/Owner, Paradise Exclusive Real Estate
Most brokerages chase agent count. Jessica Souza built something different. As broker and co-owner of Paradise Exclusive Real Estate in Southwest Florida, she grew an independent shop to more than 130 agents across three offices — and held the top independent brokerage ranking in her local board for eight straight years.
Her pitch to agents isn't about splits. It's about support — a four-week onboarding program that starts before an agent even transfers their license, a simplified tech stack agents actually use, and a culture where collaboration is the norm. Retention, not recruitment, is her growth strategy.
Jessica has taken that playbook on the road, speaking at the Florida Realtors Convention and Inside Real Estate's Unite conference. She writes for Florida Realtor Magazine, contributes to Inman, and authored The Agent Playbook — a practical guide for new agents that covers what licensing school leaves out. Inman is proud to name her a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Keegan Siegfried
Founder & CEO, Paramount Home Group
The numbers behind Keegan's team are hard to ignore. Closings jumped from 645 to 1,126 in a single year. Volume went from $260M to $398M. Agent count climbed from 41 to 189. And across Tampa, Stuart, West Palm Beach, Miami, Orlando, and Chicago, the team closed for more than 1,100 families in 2025 alone.
What makes it notable isn't any one number — it's that every metric moved in the same direction at the same time. Production, listings, agent growth, buyer savings. No tradeoffs, no plateau.
That kind of growth doesn't happen by accident. It's the result of a system built to scale — and a leader who knows how to run it. Inman is proud to name Keegan a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Haley Burlage
Partner, ERA MyPro Realty
In an industry where agents jump constantly, Haley Burlage has built something rare: a brokerage people stick with. As a partner at an ERA-affiliated firm in Southeast Wisconsin, she took on recruiting and retention five years ago and has since lost just one agent to a competing brand.
That stability traces back to how she runs the place. She rebuilt onboarding from scratch, made sure agents actually use the tools available to them, and created a culture where people feel supported rather than managed. Her background in personal production gives her credibility in those conversations — she's not guessing at what agents need.
She's also found a way to bridge experienced agents who are winding down with the systems and reach they need to keep going — pairing legacy relationships with modern execution. It's a practical idea that works. Inman is proud to name Haley a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Charles DeLong
Team Lead/agent, HomeSmart Elite
While most teams are still debating which tools to try, Charles DeLong has already tested them, kept what works, and built his business around it. As leader of The DeLong Group, he's wired AI into lead generation, client communication, and internal operations — not as a talking point, but as the actual engine of how his team runs day to day.
In 2025, the team closed more than 115 homes and ranked #4 nationwide within HomeSmart. The production is real, but so is the infrastructure behind it — systems that make agents more productive and clients better served.
Charles also puts time into developing his agents, making sure the team around him can actually use what he's built. That combination — strong production, working systems, and people who know how to run them — is what makes The DeLong Group worth watching. Inman is proud to name Charles a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Alexis Perry
Agent, Harris & Partners | Carolwood RE
A $28 million Beverly Hills estate had been on the market for more than two years before Alexis Perry took it on. She relaunched it, repositioned it, and had it sold in less than a week. That deal alone says a lot about how she works.
The New York-bred, LA-based agent has built her business at the top end of the market — representing buyers and sellers on transactions ranging from a $19 million Trousdale Estates home to a $29 million Brentwood Park estate, a $23 million sale in Bel Air, and a $20 million closing in Aspen. Complex deals, high-profile clients, and tight timelines are her usual territory.
What keeps clients coming back is equal parts results and discretion. In a market where reputation travels fast, Alexis has built a loyal client base that trusts her to handle the details and close the deal. Inman is proud to name her a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Sam Collins
Agent, Harris & Partners | Carolwood RE
Quiet and consistent, he just closes deals. Since the start of 2025, he's put up more than $150 million in sales, carries nearly $75 million in active and off-market inventory, and is on pace to clear $100 million for the year — all while adjusting to life with a newborn at home.
The transactions reflect where he operates. He represented the buyer of a $17 million Hidden Valley estate in Beverly Hills, closed a $17 million Brentwood home previously owned by Jim Carrey, and sold a $12 million Hollywood Hills residence to Brad Pitt. His range runs from a $10 million Four Seasons sale to gated estates well north of $20 million.
Eight years in, his edge is the same as it's always been: he knows the deals, he knows the market, and he doesn't rattle. Inman is proud to name him a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Kris Everett
Agent, Harris & Partners | Carolwood RE
Moving to Los Angeles without a network, without industry connections, and without a clear path in, Kris Everett started working a food truck. Four years into his real estate career — his first spent as an assistant — he has crossed $250 million in sales, including $100 million in the past year alone.
The deals reflect the climb. He represented the seller of 9050 Oriole Way — known widely as the Entourage House — which closed at $23 million, one of the top price-per-square-foot sales in the Bird Streets in 2025. He also brought in the buyer on a $23 million Brentwood estate, and just last week closed a $10 million-plus sale in Longridge Estates for an A-list client.
He now leads a team of three and is the person colleagues turn to when a deal gets complicated. The food truck is a long way back. Inman is proud to name him a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Ricky Rathore
Broker/Owner, RE/MAX Metropolis Realty
Most brokerage owners know one side of the transaction. Ricky Rathore knows all of them. A licensed lawyer and founding partner of a real estate law firm, he built RE/MAX Metropolis Realty into one of Ontario's top brokerages — top 1% by transactions and volume, with a closing roughly every 4.7 hours.
More than 300 agents and staff. Over 20,000 transactions between the brokerage and law firm combined. Five straight Consumers' Choice Awards. A top 11 global ranking among RE/MAX offices. He also runs a pre-construction apprenticeship program designed to turn agents into advisors who can handle complex deals, not just close easy ones.
An Inman Future Leaders honoree in 2025, he's only gotten busier since. Inman is proud to recognize him again as a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Arjun Baboki Nair
Agent, Compass
Winning Rookie of the Year at REBNY's 35th Annual Deal of the Year Celebration at 23 — competing in one of the most competitive luxury markets in the country — was just the start. Arjun joined Compass shortly after and hasn't slowed down since.
Working independently, without a team behind him, he built a listing portfolio of more than $18 million in the past year — including his first $11 million listing in Manhattan. This summer he starts a Master's in Real Estate Development at Columbia, where he plans to go deeper on the quantitative and systems side of the business.
He also donates a portion of his earnings to the Ehlers-Danlos Society and Reece's Rainbow, a cause supporting children with special needs in finding adoptive families — a commitment that's personal, not performative. Inman is proud to name him a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Shawnalei Tamayose
Founder Aloha Luxury Collective, Brown Harris Stevens
Sixteen years ago, she landed in New York City from Hawaii knowing nobody in real estate. She built her business from scratch in one of the toughest markets in the world — and has since closed more than $500 million in sales across resale and new development.
What makes her stand out isn't just the volume — it's how she thinks about selling. She treats each listing like a media campaign: cinematic video, targeted digital strategy, storytelling that turns a property into something people want to be part of. In a market where listings blur together, hers don't.
She's also an author and mentor working to give the next generation of agents a more structured, strategic foundation — and donates a portion of her proceeds to causes supporting education and opportunity. Named Emerging Broker of the Year and Most Influential Broker in New York. Inman is proud to name her a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Ujjal Deep Singh
Agent, HomeSmart ICARE Realty
In 2025, Ujjal made history leading the Sacramento Association of Realtors — the first Indian-American president in the organization's 117-year history. He now serves as SAR Immediate Past President and Vice Chair of the California Association of Realtors Fair Housing Policy Committee, and was part of the inaugural graduating class of the CAR Leadership Academy.
At HomeSmart ICARE Realty in Sacramento, he co-leads Team Singh — 18 agents spanning residential and commercial real estate, with a specialty in gas station and C-store transactions, hospitality assets, and SBA-financed deals. It's a deliberate range, built to serve clients at every stage of building wealth.
Fluent in English, Hindi, and Punjabi, he holds an MBA and brings that range to a Northern California market where it matters. The policy work, the team growth, the commercial expertise — it all points the same direction. Inman is proud to name him a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Rachel Hazlett-Karr
Real Estate Agent, Vanguard Properties
Coming to real estate later than most, she moved faster than almost anyone. In her first 22 months she closed more than $22 million, earned Elite Top Producer of the Year in her first full year, and built her business largely from scratch through door knocking, cold calls, and a YouTube channel that actually works.
That channel is where her filmmaking background shows up. Rather than listing tours and market updates, she makes videos about the community — the kind that get watched because they're genuinely interesting. It generates business, but it started as something more honest than that.
She's also a mother of three who volunteers regularly in her kids' schools. The same energy she brings to her clients, she brings to her neighborhood. Inman is proud to name her a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Joseph Peters
Realtor, Connect Realty
It wasn't a typical path into real estate. After a career in finance, Joseph found a sense of direction rooted in his faith community that led him to make the switch in 2021. Four years later, in his first full year at Connect Realty, he ranked in the top 10 producers nationwide and earned the President's Club Award at the Platinum level.
The production reflects how he works — with clients, colleagues, and everyone in between. Real Producers Magazine put it plainly in their March 2026 profile: "For Joseph, success in real estate is not measured by numbers, but by purpose." That comes through in how he shows up. People notice it.
Outside the office he leads youth programs at his church, volunteers with Lion's Club, and coaches CrossFit. He brings the same energy to all of it. Inman is proud to name him a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Brian Nugent
Director of Sales, IS Luxury
Four years of professional hockey, a Division I scholarship, stints as team captain and player rep to the PHPA — Brian Nugent's first career ended in Las Vegas when he played for the Wranglers. He got his broker-salesperson license and joined IS Luxury. The transition turned out to suit him well.
He closed $60 million in 2025 and added $24 million more in Q1 2026 alone. As Director of Sales, he works alongside founder Ivan Sher on day-to-day operations — advising on strategy, guiding complex deals, and mentoring agents on pricing and negotiations. IS Luxury hit $779 million in total brokerage sales in 2025.
The skills translate more directly than you'd expect. Negotiation, leadership under pressure, knowing when to push and when to hold — hockey trained him well. Inman is proud to name him a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Jonathan Dolphus
President, Broward, Palm Beaches & St. Lucie REALTORS®
Most people who reach the presidency of a 42,000-member association have spent decades working up to it. Jonathan Dolphus is 35 and already there — serving as 2026 President of Broward, Palm Beaches & St. Lucie Realtors®, the third-largest local association in the nation.
He's been busy with it. Under his watch, BeachesMLS consolidated education, MLS data, events, dues, and communications into one system — fewer logins, less noise, more time for agents to actually work. He's also pushing AI into listing accuracy and compliance, not as a buzzword but as a practical fix for friction agents deal with every day.
He's also launching the RWorld Community Foundation, focused on housing assistance, disaster relief, and member volunteerism. Florida Realtors® named him RPAC Innovator of the Year. He still runs his own team. Inman is proud to name him a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Philip Farr
Luxury Real Estate Agent, Vanguard Properties
Philip Farr has quickly established himself as one of the rising names in San Francisco luxury real estate. In less than three years since launching his business, he has closed more than $92.5 million in sales volume while building a reputation for strategic advisory, white-glove service, and exceptional execution in one of the country’s most competitive markets.
A top-producing agent at Vanguard Properties, Farr was named the firm’s #1 Buyer’s Agent by dollar volume in both 2024 and 2025 and earned the LuxeSF Rising Star Award early in his career. He also ranks among the top 1% of agents in San Francisco by sales volume.
Known for representing founders, executives, and high-net-worth clients across San Francisco and Marin County, Farr is part of a new generation of luxury real estate leaders, combining strategic advisory, elevated client service, and a modern, technology-forward approach to branding and client engagement. Inman is proud to name him a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Nick Younker
Luxury Properties Specialist, William Raveis
At 29, Nick Younker has built one of the more quietly impressive track records in Palm Beach luxury real estate. Five years in at William Raveis, he's closed $200 million in total volume — including a $28 million sale at 1200 S. Ocean Boulevard in Manalapan — and climbed the brokerage's production rankings every single year, from President's Club in 2022 to Platinum Club top 2% in 2025.
What stands out is the range. He works deals from $350,000 to $33 million and treats the service level the same across all of it — staying involved well past closing, connecting clients to contractors and designers, and turning transactions into long-term relationships. He's also started building a team, bringing other agents along as his own business has grown.
Outside work he supports the Selfless Love Foundation and the Heart Ball Foundation. Inman is proud to name Nick a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Jackie Viard & Caitlyn Morris
Chief Business Officer & Chief Growth Officer, Signature Premier Properties
Jackie Viard and Caitlyn Morris didn't arrive at Signature Premier Properties — they were raised in it. A third- and second-generation real estate professional respectively, they now oversee brokerage operations, recruiting, retention, and growth across one of Long Island's largest independent firms. In 2025, Signature closed more than $4.5 billion in residential sales and 5,975 transactions, ranking #2 on Long Island and among the top 50 brokerages in the country.
They work alongside their parents — co-owners Kathy Viard and Peter Morris, who built the company into what it is — but they're not just carrying on a legacy. They're the ones expanding it, bringing a more modern lens to operations while keeping the agent-first culture intact. In a market being swallowed by corporate models, Signature has stayed independent, accessible, and community-rooted. That's partly on them.
They also lead Signature Cares, the company's philanthropic arm, embedding community giving into the firm's day-to-day identity. Inman is proud to name Jackie and Caitlyn 2026 Future Leaders in Real Estate.
Morgan Willemsen
Licensed Real Estate Agent, Long & Foster Real Estate
When Morgan Willemsen relocated from Okinawa to Washington, D.C. as a military spouse, she couldn't find an agent who would return her calls about a rental. That experience stuck. She got her license and spent her first year working 42 open houses — nearly every weekend — helping 16 buyers find homes. Those clients sent their friends. Those friends sent more. A referral-based business averaging around $14 million annually grew from there.
She runs almost no paid advertising. Her clients come back — some sell with her multiple times in a single year — and she hosts an annual Gratitude Gathering at her home, one of the few marketing investments she makes. It's become a tradition clients look forward to.
She and her husband also built an investment portfolio by buying homes, improving them, and converting them to rentals — a strategy she's shared with clients and fellow agents, including through an internal investment program at Long & Foster. If the timing isn't right for a client to buy or sell, she'll say so. That honesty is why they keep coming back. Inman is proud to name Morgan a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Michael Azzam
Agent / Team Leader, RE/MAX Haven Realty
Most teams at 500-plus transactions annually have found ways to step back from the day-to-day. Michael Azzam hasn't. As leader of The Azzam Group — 11 agents, 4 administrators — he stays close to the work, the clients, and the development of his people. The results back it up: #1 ranked team in Ohio for transactions in both 2024 and 2025, and a Top 50 RE/MAX team nationally.
His client base spans 19 countries, which gives him a range of experience that's hard to replicate — and makes him a practical resource for agents navigating deals that don't fit the standard playbook. He holds the RE/MAX Lifetime Achievement and Hall of Fame awards, along with the Pinnacle Club Team award.
Nearly a decade in, the focus hasn't shifted: better systems, stronger agents, and a client-first approach that holds regardless of volume. Inman is proud to name Michael a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Lauren Mastracco
Rocky River, OH Office Manager, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services
Managing a large, multi-team office in a competitive market is the kind of job that exposes leaders quickly. Lauren Mastracco has done it at Rocky River with consistency — keeping agents focused, aligned, and informed while navigating the constant change that comes with the territory.
What colleagues notice most is how she handles pressure. She doesn't add noise to difficult situations — she brings clarity. That steadiness has a way of spreading through a team, giving people the confidence to perform even when conditions aren't ideal.
Her communication is direct and transparent, which builds the kind of trust that's hard to manufacture and easy to lose. In a role that requires balancing operational demands with genuine people leadership, Lauren does both without letting either slip. Inman is proud to name her a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Matt Demson
Durham, NC Office Manager, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services
At the Durham office, Matt Demson has spent ten years building something most branch managers talk about but rarely pull off: a culture where good agents want to come, and stay. His recruiting track record has strengthened the office's position in a competitive market, and his seat on the Leadership Council reflects the broader influence he's earned within the organization.
His focus once agents are in the door is just as deliberate. Training, mentorship, and real support on contract complexity and market navigation — the kind of development that helps agents build careers, not just close transactions. He works across experience levels, from first-time homebuyer specialists to veterans who've been in the business longer than he has.
The through line is consistency. He shows up the same way for his agents that he expects them to show up for clients. Inman is proud to name Matt a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Kady Overton
Solon/Macedonia, OH Manager, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services
Running the Solon and Macedonia offices isn't the full picture. Kady Overton chairs the Diversity Committee, serves as vice chair of the Governance Task Force, and sits on the Professional Standards Committee — while staying deeply involved with Ohio REALTORS®, the Women's Council of REALTORS®, and state-level advocacy. That's a lot of seats at a lot of tables, and she's earned each one.
Licensed since 2014, her approach inside the office mirrors what she brings to the industry at large: coach first, educator always. She's focused on helping agents build careers that are both profitable and grounded in ethics — not treating those things as competing priorities.
The trust she's earned from agents and peers comes from showing up the same way in every room. Inman is proud to name Kady a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Cody W. Studebaker
Broker/Branch Manager, Downtown Indianapolis office, FC Tucker
When F.C. Tucker opened its Downtown Indianapolis office in 2016, Cody Studebaker was part of getting it off the ground. By 2017 he was managing it — and nearly a decade later, still is. That kind of tenure says something about both his consistency and the culture he's built around him.
His background from Purdue in sales management and organizational leadership shows up in how he runs the office — performance and accountability on one side, genuine coaching and career development on the other. He takes time to understand what each agent is actually trying to build, then helps them get there.
Outside the office he supports Riley Children's Hospital, Indiana Donor Network, Wheeler Mission, and HVAF. The same investment he makes in his agents, he makes in his community. Inman is proud to name Cody a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Brian Larson
Brian Larson, Associate Broker, Collier Office, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services
As associate broker, Brian Larson has helped build his office into one of Pennsylvania's top performers — and his focus hasn't shifted to maintaining that standing so much as pushing past it. He's consistently looking at what systems need updating, what strategies need refreshing, and where the next opportunity is.
His agents notice the difference. Brian leads with development in mind — mentoring, accountability, and real support rather than just setting expectations and stepping back. The culture he's built keeps agents focused and gives them what they need to serve clients at a higher level.
His influence has spread beyond his own office too, shaping how the broader market around him operates. Inman is proud to name Brian a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Helen Cestra
Sales Director Sewickley Office, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services
What makes Helen Cestra's leadership at the Sewickley office credible is that she's still in the market herself. As a multi-million dollar producer and sales director, she brings real-time market knowledge into every conversation with her agents — not just management theory. Her designations across relocation, luxury, and new home sales give her range that covers most of what agents in her office encounter.
She's active in NAR, the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors, and the Realtors Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh — and has earned recognition as a Pittsburgh Business Times 30 Under 30 honoree and one of the Top 100 Realtors in Western Pennsylvania.
Outside the office she sits on the board of Family House and supports the Howard Hanna Children's Free Care Fund. The same commitment she brings to her agents, she brings to her community. Inman is proud to name Helen a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Harrison Beacher
Managing Partner, Coalition Properties Group
When Harrison Beacher co-founded Coalition Properties Group in 2019, the idea was straightforward: use real estate as a tool for building wealth, not just closing transactions. The D.C.-area team is approaching $1 billion in career sales volume and has helped nearly 2,000 families buy, sell, and invest across Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. One of their more deliberate moves is a syndicated investment model that allows clients to pool resources and get into deals that would normally be out of reach — a direct effort to expand access in underserved communities.
His footprint in organized real estate runs deep. He served as President of GCAAR, was named GCAAR Realtor of the Year in 2023, and currently serves as 2026 President of the District of Columbia Association of Realtors. At the national level he's a 2016 NAR 30 Under 30 honoree, an inaugural NAR Fair Housing Champion, and currently Vice Chair of NAR's YPN Advisory Board.
He also speaks nationally on fair housing, millennial buyer engagement, and young professional development. Fifteen years in, the through line hasn't changed. Inman is proud to name Harrison a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
The Weston Littlefield Team
Estates Directors | Christie's International Real Estate Southern California, Weston James Group | Christie's International Real Estate Southern California
At Christie's International Real Estate Southern California, Weston Littlefield and Alex Howe have closed more than $400 million over the past three years — including $193 million in 2025 alone — without leaning on inherited relationships or legacy referral networks. Their client list includes Gary Friedman, CEO of Restoration Hardware, and film producer Oren Koules. Those connections were built through direct outreach, persistent follow-up, and deals that delivered.
The Weston James Group operates as a boutique team within the Aaron Kirman-led brokerage, focused on significant architectural properties and estates. They handle every stage of a deal themselves — prospecting, marketing, negotiation — and have been named among the Los Angeles Business Journal's Top 100 Real Estate Agents and ranked in the Top 1% in sales at Christie's International.
Three years in Beverly Hills luxury, $400 million closed, and no signs of slowing down.
Luis Fermin
Executive Vice President, LPT Realty
As Executive Vice President at LPT Realty, Luis Fermin has spent four years doing something that's hard to do at scale: convincing high-performing teams to move. Big Block Realty, The Christie Cannon Team, ChuckTown Homes, Military Veteran Team, VYBE Realty — more than 400 teams have come to LPT's platform in part through his involvement, including several now projected to rank in the RealTrends Top 20 this year.
On top of that, he co-hosts "Real Estate First Friday" every week with fellow EVP Matthew Hodge — a live coaching session for LPT's 20,000-plus agents. Each episode brings in top producers from around the country to talk through what's actually working in their markets. It's practical, consistent, and free for every agent on the platform.
The combination of enterprise-level recruiting and weekly direct engagement with agents isn't typical for someone at his level. At 38, Luis Fermin is doing both.
Lauren Bowen
Senior Vice President of Lead Generation and Conversion, LPT Realty
Before real estate, Lauren Bowen worked in healthcare. She brought that same people-first instinct into operations, eventually becoming COO of Robert Slack — one of Florida's highest-ranked mega teams. In 2025 she moved to LPT Realty, where she now oversees lead generation strategy and infrastructure across the entire brokerage platform, supporting more than 20,000 agents.
The scope is bigger but the work is familiar: connect marketing, technology, and performance into systems that turn leads into closings. Through LPT's Team Growth Plus program, she works directly with teams of all sizes — helping them sort out their tech, clean up their workflows, and grow their lead sources. She also mentors other professionals navigating the realities of leadership at scale.
HousingWire named her a 2025 Woman of Influence. This marks her third time on Inman's Future Leaders list.
Jenalee Mobley
Vice President of Closings, LPT Realty
When LPT Realty launched in 2022, Jenalee Mobley was there from the start. Over four years she moved from DA Team Lead to AVP of Closing Transactions to VP of Closings — a role she stepped into in March 2026 that puts her in charge of all closing, commission, and post-closing financial workflows for more than 20,000 agents across the U.S. and Canada.
In the past 12 months alone, she consolidated three separate commission departments into one unified operation, grew her team nearly 180% from 11 to 31-plus members, took on Canadian commission and payment coordination, and restructured how the Commission Concierge function is organized — all without breaking stride as transaction volume kept climbing.
At 34, Jenalee Mobley is the person who built the infrastructure that keeps LPT's commission operations running at scale.
Josh Ries
Director of Advancement & South Dakota Managing Broker, My Real Estate Company™
In 2020, Josh Ries was serving on a riot squad in Portland when a pipe bomb blast left him with a traumatic brain injury. He was 31. He spent the next years rebuilding — and redirecting. He traded his badge for a real estate license and brought the same discipline and accountability from law enforcement into how he runs a brokerage.
As Director of Advancement and South Dakota Managing Broker, Josh has grown his brokerage across seven states — not by recruiting and stepping back, but by staying close to his agents. His focus is on teaching them to think like business owners: when to spend on lead generation, when not to, and how to build something that holds up long-term rather than just closing deals in the short run.
He's an active contributor in the Inman community, a speaker at industry events and conferences, and a regular voice on real estate podcasts. At home he's a husband and father to twin daughters. Both things drive the same instinct: build something that lasts.
Ava Marvastian
Licensed Real Estate Agent, Long & Foster Real Estate
Growing up in a family involved in large-scale development, studying architecture, and spending years in construction project management — that's a lot of background to bring into real estate. For Ava Marvastian, it shows up every time she walks a new construction site and can tell a buyer exactly what they're looking at and what it's worth.
She also navigated building a life in a new country, which shaped how she works with clients facing major decisions in unfamiliar territory. She started with rental clients to learn the market from the ground up, studied how top producers operated, and built her business through referrals and trust rather than paid leads. It worked. She earned Rookie of the Year recognition and went on to rank among the top solo agents by gross commission income in Montgomery County.
Fluent in Farsi, she also serves as a trusted resource for international and Persian-speaking clients navigating one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives.
Advocate for Change
Amanda Christel
Chief Of Staff, The Real Brokerage
Recently promoted to Chief of Staff at Real, Amanda is the person who sees a problem forming before anyone else does, clears the path, and keeps the work moving. At 32, she's running cross-functional initiatives at a scale most people spend a decade working up to.
What sets her apart isn't just execution — it's how she improves things as she goes. She doesn't just manage processes; she spots where they're breaking and fixes them. Teams that work with her tend to come out more organized and more effective than when they started.
She's also the kind of leader people trust quickly — direct, reliable, and steady under pressure. In a company moving fast, that matters more than most job descriptions let on. Inman is proud to name her a 2026 Future Leader in Real Estate.
Camryn Cisneros
Manager, ONE eXp, eXp Realty
In the past year, Camryn Cisneros grew the eXp Pride Network to 20,000 members — one of the largest LGBTQ+ professional networks in real estate — while simultaneously stepping into a corporate role overseeing culture strategy for all 50,000 agents across ONE eXp's 16 resource groups in more than 20 countries. She built a seven-city national speaking tour from scratch, helped execute over 200 events globally, and expanded ONE eXp's community footprint across 10 new countries.
But the number that mattered most didn't come from a dashboard. At a Houston rally stop, a panel of leaders shared the parts of their stories that, by the data, should have stopped them — an agent who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina and now helps families rebuild after disaster, another who grew up with parents in addiction and turned that into a platform for others. The next day she got a call from an agent who said he'd never told anyone what he was about to share. A head-on collision had shattered his family. The panel gave him permission to say it out loud. Together they are now building a men's mental health awareness campaign inside ONE eXp.
HousingWire named her a Rising Star. Success Magazine recognized her leadership. NAHREP welcomed her to the national housing policy table.
Felix Bravo
Head of eXp International, eXp Realty
As Head of eXp International, Felix Bravo spent 2025 doing what most organizations spend years planning. Seven new markets launched. $8.8 billion in sales volume, up 63%. $146.9 million in revenue, up 67%. 28,600 transactions, up 50%. Agent productivity climbing from below 40% to 59% in a single year. Market entry cost down 37%. Every number moving at once, across borders.
His team built 28 country websites without a development budget. They launched LYVVE, a proprietary international property search platform, from scratch. They generated 21 million social impressions and 1.5 million video views across a global audience. These weren't handed down from above — they were built by people Felix put in a position to move without asking for permission first.
In February 2026 he appeared on the cover of Real Estate Investor Magazine as the face of eXp's global growth. For a company with no physical offices, that kind of recognition across 28 markets is hard to manufacture.
Dennis Cestra Jr.
President, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services
Growing up in a real estate family is one thing. Delivering a 70% jump in closed volume across a multi-state region is another. Dennis Cestra Jr. is a third-generation member of the Hanna real estate family, but his track record stands on its own. As president of Howard Hanna's Southeast Virginia region, he expanded the office footprint from 14 to 21 locations, entered new markets including Charlottesville, and grew closed volume from $1.25 billion to $2 billion in just a few years.
He now serves as president of the Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland regions — overseeing operations, strategy, and business development across three states. His background spans mortgage, title, insurance, and residential brokerage, which gives him a full picture of how the pieces fit together.
He sits on multiple industry boards, is active with the Young Presidents Organization and several Realtor associations, and was recently appointed to the Broker Public Portal Board of Managers — a role that puts him in national conversations around data standards and transparency in home search.
Raffi Williams
Vice President of Communications, National Association of Realtors®
At an organization under intense public scrutiny, that's not a small detail. It's the whole story. Raffi Williams joined NAR in May 2025 as Vice President of Communications, and in less than a year he's overhauled how America's largest trade association talks to its members, the press, and the public.
Before 30, he had already served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at HUD and Acting Director of Communications at FHFA — then spent time at Edelman Smithfield and the Managed Funds Association navigating complex regulatory communications for financial clients. He arrived at NAR knowing how Washington press circles, financial media, and trade press actually work. He put that to use immediately.
In his first year he rebuilt NAR's surrogate program into the NAR Influencer Program — now growing toward 1,500 members equipped with weekly newsletters, talking points, and consumer-friendly framing. He convened NAR's first-ever Creator Summit, launched the REALTOR® News Change Agents podcast, and produced NAR's first annual report. Segmented communications so brokers, commercial practitioners, young professionals, and association executives each get messaging that actually speaks to them.
Forbes named him to its "30 Under 30" list for Law and Policy. He's a former journalist and political spokesperson who understands how stories land — not just how they're packaged. Real estate doesn't often get communications leaders with that range. NAR has one now.
Alison Adams Grey
Chief of Staff, LPT Realty
Few people have been inside LPT Realty longer than Alison Adams Grey. As Chief of Staff to founder and CEO Robert Palmer, she's been part of the engine since the earliest days — leading work across executive operations, brokerage infrastructure, and organizational design, building the systems that let a fast-growing company actually hold together as it scales across the U.S. and Canada.
She also oversees recruiting and people operations — the side of growth that determines whether agents stay once they arrive. At a brokerage moving this fast, culture is easy to lose. Adams Grey is the reason it hasn't been.
A previous Inman Future Leaders honoree and HousingWire Woman of Influence, she's one of the more consequential operators in the industry right now — largely working out of the spotlight.
Javier Nuñez-Jusino
Partner Success Manager, Side
Since joining Side in 2021 at 24 years old, he's worked alongside boutique brokerage founders across multiple markets — not as an advisor who hands over a playbook, but as someone who stays in the room through hiring plans, compensation models, lead generation systems, and accountability structures. The work is operational, not theoretical.
The results are concrete. Companies he's supported have grown from roughly $30 million in annual production to more than $140 million. Teams that were closing 60 transactions a year are now closing 250-plus. Founders who were the business are building businesses that run beyond them.
He also connects founders across markets so they can share what's actually working — recruiting strategies, operational frameworks, growth models. It's a cross-market knowledge network that helps independent brokerages compete with national brands without giving up what makes them distinct. This nomination was self-submitted without a name — if you have it, we're glad to add it.
Founders and Entrepreneurs
Tucker Blalock
Founder + Managing Broker, The Brokery
After serving in the Marine Corps and graduating from Arizona State with a business degree, Tucker Blalock co-founded The Brokery in Phoenix with a simple premise: build a modern brokerage that actually puts agents first. What started with two agents has grown to more than 150, with $360 million in annual sales and a realistic path to $1 billion in 2026.
The growth is real, but so is the culture behind it. Tucker has built a reputation for simplifying complex transactions and processes in a way that gives agents clarity and confidence — not just volume targets. The Brokery has become one of the more recognizable independent brands in Phoenix, attracting talent that could go anywhere.
Phoenix Business Journal named him a 40 Under 40 honoree in 2023. He also gives his time regularly to Fresh Start Women's Organization. The military background shows up in how he runs things — disciplined, direct, and focused on the people around him.
Dalip Jaggi
COO, Revive Real Estate
As COO of Revive Real Estate, he's helped build a platform that removes the barriers that typically stand between homeowners and the full value of their property — upfront renovation costs, murky pricing, and a shortage of trusted guidance. The idea is straightforward: give everyday homeowners the same data, strategy, and execution access that has historically been reserved for people with capital and connections.
Dalip runs the operational side of that with discipline — moving ideas from concept to real outcomes without letting them stall. He connects homeowner needs, agent success, and market dynamics into decisions that are clear and fast. Homeowners are making better calls. Agents are winning more listings. Properties are hitting their actual market potential.
The premise behind all of it is that real estate wealth shouldn't be limited to people who already know how to navigate the system. That's the problem he's working on.
Katie Lamboglia
Owner/Broker in Charge, True North Realty
With 20 years of industry experience behind her, Katie Lamboglia launched True North Realty and grew it to a 40-plus agent boutique brokerage in less than three years — built on systems, automation, and a deliberate focus on developing leaders inside the organization, not just closing deals.
She also built the Living in NC YouTube channel, now one of the go-to relocation resources in North Carolina with more than 2,000 subscribers, 300,000 views, and 1.3 million impressions. It generates business, but it started as something more useful than that — a genuine resource for people figuring out where to land.
A Top 10 Under 40 honoree and appointed member of the Canopy Board of REALTORS® Grievance Committee, Katie Lamboglia is doing the kind of work that tends to compound quietly — until it doesn't.
James Wong
CEO & Founder, MAXA Designs
At 33, James Wong runs a profitable, self-funded design technology and branding platform powering marketing for more than 250 enterprise brands — including REAL Brokerage, PennyMac, HomeSmart, William Raveis, and FirstTeam Real Estate. The REAL partnership alone, closed in November 2025, pushed MAXA's total reach past 400,000 agents and was covered by Inman and other major publications.
Growth has accelerated to 45% year-over-year. His 50-person R&D division shipped automated MLS-to-marketing workflows and direct mail capabilities this past year. Inman and T3 Sixty recognized MAXA as a 2025 Top Tech for Brokerages across three categories. No client has ever left a negative review across 13 years and 250-plus enterprise accounts. No employee has ever voluntarily left — six founding team members just received 10-year anniversary awards.
He also co-founded the Exhibit Awards with T3 Sixty in 2022 — the only national awards program dedicated to brand design excellence in real estate and mortgage — because creative teams in this industry rarely get recognized. He still personally hires every one of MAXA's 100 employees. That tells you most of what you need to know about how he runs it.
Nate Robert Eze
CEO - Founder, PATH Intelligence
Through VSN, his 3D visualization studio, Nate Robert-Eze spent years inside the sales process of luxury developers across the country. He watched them attract thousands of qualified buyers into virtual experiences and then lose track of nearly all of them — not because the buyers weren't interested, but because there was no system to surface who was. At 30, he built one.
PATH Intelligence works inside any virtual property tour to track buyer behavior in real time — what rooms they lingered in, what they asked, how long they spent, what they skipped. That data gets turned into a scored prospect profile delivered to the sales team the next morning. The first call feels like a fifth call because PATH has already done the listening. Enterprise clients include Hines, Kolter Homes, Grubb Ventures, and a pilot with Ritz-Carlton Residences.
The company holds an NC IDEA SEED grant, is part of the NVIDIA Inception program, and was selected for CED Venture Connect 2026. Nate also writes and speaks on spatial intelligence and the future of property discovery, contributing to Inman and other outlets. He spent five years watching the problem before founding the company solving it. That's a foundation most founders don't have.
James Rogers and Zach Gorman
Co-founders (CEO & COO), RealReports
As co-founders of RealReports, James Rogers and Zach Gorman closed partnerships in 2025 with CRMLS, FMLS, PrimeMLS, MetroList, SFAR, MIBOR, and more than 40 other MLS and brokerage organizations. That kind of adoption speed in a relationship-driven, fragmented industry reflects a product agents and MLSs actually want — not just a sales team working the phones.
RealReports has grown from a single product into a platform — Taxshot, Pulse, Prospector, Sightline, RealCMA — each replacing a category of legacy software rather than adding another tab to an existing dashboard. The company was named to the Swanepoel 200 Watchlist and has attracted $1 million in strategic investment from MLS organizations including MetroList and MLS Now, which are partners and investors.
The pace at which Rogers and Gorman ship usable, production-ready tools has reset expectations for what a small proptech team can accomplish. They're building fast and the industry is taking notice.
Will Dunn
Chief Financial Officer, Clever Real Estate
Will Dunn was part of the leadership team at Buildium when RealPage acquired it for $580 million in 2019 — one of the larger proptech exits of that era. Instead of cashing out, he identified a problem worth solving: millions of renters wanting to buy homes had no real relationship with the industry until the moment they were ready to sign. In 2021 he co-founded Gravy Technologies, built the first loyalty rewards platform for aspiring homebuyers, helped 30,000 members earn $20 million toward their first home, and sold the company to Clever Real Estate in 2024.
At Clever he went from founder to General Manager to CFO in under 18 months. Since joining, he's helped drive 60% year-over-year revenue growth in Q1 2026 while guiding the company to profitability — rare in real estate, rarer still alongside that growth rate. Clever now carries an 85 NPS and helps thousands of consumers move each month across agent matching, cash offers, mortgage, title, and insurance.
The thread running through all of it is the same: build for the consumer earlier, give the best agents better tools, and let the results follow. At 37, Will Dunn has already done that twice.
Colten Marsden
Co Founder, HouseQuest
As co-founder and Head of Product at HouseQuest, Colten is working on one of the more stubborn problems in real estate: the way buyers actually search for homes hasn't changed much in decades. His platform moves away from rigid filter criteria and toward matching people based on lifestyle, preferences, and what they respond to emotionally — the things that determine whether someone feels at home, not just whether a property technically qualifies.
For agents, that means client insights that go well beyond bedrooms and budget — information that helps them work smarter and build stronger relationships from the first conversation. The platform also lets listings become interactive experiences through augmented reality and Feature Tags, giving sellers a way to stand out beyond photos and square footage.
A named inventor on seven patents and a featured presenter at the 2024 SXSW Startup Pitch Competition, Colten brings both the technical depth and the product instincts to back the idea up. The home search has needed rethinking for a long time. He's doing the work.
Steve Carroll
Co-Founder & CEO, Findigs
Most rental decisions are still made manually — property managers stitching together paperwork, credit scores, and gut instinct over two to three days. Findigs makes the same decision in 3.4 hours, with a contractual fraud guarantee that no competitor in the space will match.
Steve Carroll co-founded Findigs in 2018 and spent eight years building the only leasing decisioning platform that delivers an automatic yes or no outcome for each applicant — backed by accountability that extends beyond the software. Users have reduced bad-debt losses by up to 60% and evictions by up to 80%. The platform now operates across more than 400,000 rental units and hundreds of operators including McKinley, Oakwood, Sentral, and Western Wealth.
He started with a rent payment app, decided it wasn't the right problem to solve, scrapped it, and built this instead. He runs weekly open office hours where any employee can challenge any decision he makes. Fair underwriting, he argues, requires more than one perspective. The category he invented is starting to reflect that.
Maor Greenberg
Co-Founder & CEO, Spacial
Most construction tech founders have read about the permitting problem. Maor Greenberg lived it for nearly two decades. His first construction venture launched in 2006, and what followed was a portfolio of companies — Greenberg Construction, Greenberg Design Gallery, VRchitects — built from the ground up across thousands of residential and commercial projects. He worked inside building code, permitting, material procurement, and architectural detailing long enough to understand exactly where the process breaks and why.
In 2024, at 38, he founded Spacial — a platform built to automate permit-ready design workflows across the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. The goal is straightforward: turn time-intensive, manual processes into something that scales.
The field-level knowledge behind the product is what separates him from most founders in this space. He didn't diagnose the problem from a whiteboard. He found it project by project, for eighteen years, then built the fix.
Marketing and Sales
Andrea Delgado
Vice President of PR and Communications, The Agency
Eight years in, Andrea Delgado was just promoted to Vice President of PR and Communications at The Agency — the kind of title that gets handed to people who've been making the job bigger than the title for years. She leads the brokerage's bicoastal in-house PR team, handling media relations across franchise expansion, new development, executive leadership, and the firm's top-producing agents, while also contributing to The Agency Magazine and The Agency Journal.
The challenge of that job is easy to underestimate. A story that lands in Los Angeles doesn't automatically translate to Manhattan, let alone markets in Europe or Central America. Andrea has spent 15 years across luxury lifestyle, architecture, hospitality, and real estate learning not just how to tell a story, but which story to tell and for whom.
In an industry where PR tends to be reactive, she runs a proactive operation — building narratives ahead of the news cycle rather than chasing it. The Agency's voice has stayed sharp through rapid global growth. That doesn't happen on its own.
Senior Vice President of Franchise Sales, North and South America, The Agency
As Senior Vice President of Franchise Sales for North and South America, Ricardo built the infrastructure behind one of the more remarkable expansion stories in luxury real estate. When he joined the division, he was one of its only employees. In 2025 alone, The Agency opened 27 new offices, and his team onboarded franchisees representing over $1.5 billion in annual sales volume.
What's held through that growth is the brand. Ricardo built the franchise support systems from scratch with a specific philosophy: treat every franchise owner the way the brand treats its best clients. That standard of care has produced stronger retention and consistent brand delivery across markets that look nothing alike — from Los Angeles to Latin America.
Fifteen years inside the company gives him a perspective most franchise executives don't have. He knows where the brand came from and what it costs to protect it at scale. HousingWire and the Los Angeles Business Journal have both recognized his contributions. The more telling measure is that the boutique feel The Agency built in one LA office still shows up in 150 locations worldwide.
Elyse Leff
Executive Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Elad Group
As EVP at Elad Group, Elyse Leff drives sales at the top end of New York City's new development market — and in 2025 she made it look straightforward. She positioned both 108 Leonard and THE 74 among the city's 20 best-selling residential buildings, closing a $25 million duplex penthouse at THE 74 and landmark sales including a $24.45 million penthouse at 108 Leonard. BUILD Awards named her NYC's New Development Marketing & Sales Person of the Year.
Her method is deliberate. She builds a distinct narrative for each project — design-led, lifestyle-focused, targeted at the specific buyer she's trying to reach — and then turns the model residences themselves into marketing infrastructure. Private buyer tours, magazine cover shoots, brand activations for Piaget and Acorn Labs, a Sports Illustrated panel featuring Andre Drummond at the 108 Leonard Clocktower Penthouse. The space does the selling before a price is ever discussed.
108 Leonard earned global recognition from the Luxury Lifestyle Awards for Best Landmark Conversion and Best Luxury Penthouse. Elad Group ranked among the Top 100 Real Estate Developers in the World. The results trace back to how she positions each project before a single unit goes to contract.
Michael Stancil
SVP of Marketing, Offerpad
Five years ago he joined Offerpad as Director of Digital Marketing. Today, Michael Stancil owns the full marketing function — strategy, budget, team, and board-level accountability for results — at one of the few publicly traded iBuyers still operating at scale. Every campaign decision lands on an earnings call eventually. That's a level of scrutiny most marketers never face.
Under his leadership, the marketing function has grown more focused and more effective year over year. He operates across brand, revenue, and customer acquisition in a company where marketing directly affects investor confidence as much as seller demand. His credibility across departments comes from staying grounded in outcomes rather than internal politics.
Real estate has historically lagged other industries in marketing sophistication. He's among a small group of people working to change that — with the kind of accountability most marketing leaders never have to face.
Jillian Vaccaro
Chief People Officer, REAL New York
As Chief People Officer at REAL New York, Jillian Vaccaro oversees more than 150 agents and leads strategy across development, recruiting, sales, and marketing. The 23% commission-per-deal growth among agents in her structured programs isn't a soft metric — it's proof that the systems she builds translate directly to agent performance.
She's also built out REAL New York's new development division, which now has over 4,000 units in the pipeline — including a 70-story Midtown tower. Her ability to connect market intelligence, pricing strategy, and operations has made the firm a real competitor for landlord and developer relationships in a crowded market.
REAL New York landed on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in 2024. Jill's fingerprints are on both the cultural and financial side of that result.
Kerry Kleckner
VP of Sales, Fello
When Kerry Kleckner joined Fello at launch, the commercial infrastructure didn't exist yet. She built it — sales, customer success, and partnerships — while the company grew to more than 20,000 users in two years. Before that she was at Zillow launching new markets and scaling teams. She brings both the strategic instinct and the operational follow-through that early-stage companies rarely find in the same person.
Now leading partnerships, she's connecting brokerages, technology providers, and mortgage companies — parts of the real estate transaction that have historically operated in separate lanes. The goal is straightforward: give agents a more complete picture of the client relationship, from first contact through repeat and referral business.
What keeps her grounded is staying close to the customer. She regularly engages on the front lines with agents and team leaders, which means the strategies she builds reflect how the industry actually works rather than how it looks on a slide deck.
Britni Ackrivo
Executive Vice President, Gregory
Starting as an intern at Gregory, Britni Ackrivo worked her way to EVP — the youngest in the firm's history — and now leads its real estate practice. Not in the polished aftermath of a successful deal, but in the messy middle where approvals are uncertain and community opposition is building. That's where her work happens.
She's guided communications for housing projects facing resistance across Pennsylvania — including low-income housing in Quakertown, a multifamily community in Chadds Ford, and a senior living development in Gladwyne — helping rebuild trust and reopen paths to approval where progress had stalled. She also supported the lease-up of One Rangers Way in Arlington, Texas, generating more than 150 media placements and over 3 billion impressions. Her team is a communications partner to FirstService Residential, which manages more than 8,000 communities across North America.
She also created and hosts PlotLines, Gregory's real estate podcast — 40-plus episodes, national recognition, and a Gold Viddy Award. She moderated a reporter roundtable in New York City on housing and development and hosts industry webinars attended by developers and executives. The work she does in public is an extension of what she does behind the scenes: getting housing built.
Shannon Heyman
Communications Director, Howard Hanna | Coach Realtors
Most communications roles sit between departments. Shannon Heyman built hers into something agents across Long Island actually rely on. At Howard Hanna | Coach Realtors, she develops the marketing programs, tools, and strategies that shape how agents present themselves and their listings every day — and was recently appointed Director of the Marketing Technology Advisory Council for Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, putting her at the table where vendor partnerships and marketing technology strategy get shaped across a global network.
Inside the company she's known for taking big-picture ideas and turning them into practical systems agents can actually use. Outside of work she leads the firm's community efforts — the annual Long Island Cares food drive, volunteer coordination at Ronald McDonald House, and holiday programs across the region.
The combination of national industry influence and genuine local investment is what makes her stand out. Both get the same level of attention.
Tiffany Oris
Senior VP of Marketing, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services
Three states. Dozens of offices. Each one used to look a little different. Tiffany Oris fixed that. As SVP of Marketing for Howard Hanna's Southeast Region, she led the brand unification across the Carolinas and Georgia — aligning messaging, visuals, and strategy across markets that had been operating with their own identities. It's the kind of work that's invisible when it goes well and obvious when it doesn't. It went well.
She also runs the company's Fall Convention — a large-scale event that brings together agents and leadership for education and collaboration — and recently expanded her scope with a promotion to oversee Creative Design for Howard Hanna nationally, setting standards across all marketing channels.
Her influence shows up in the campaigns agents use to present themselves, in the consistency of how the brand appears across markets, and in an organization that looks more cohesive than it did before she started working on it.
Nicole Hogue
Senior VP, McQuaid Holdings, LLC, SERHANT.
Real estate marketing tends to prioritize how things look. Nicole Hogue has spent her career focused on whether they work. Coming up through PR and account management — and running her own business along the way — she brought a strategist's eye into her role as SVP at McQuaid Holdings and McQuaid & Company in Naples, Florida, where she runs the full creative, marketing, advertising, and PR operation for the brokerage and its related entities.
She coaches agents one-on-one, builds out their social profiles, and helps them position themselves as the experts they are. Her view is that the agent's brand matters as much as the brokerage's brand, and she works on both at the same time. The events she designs aren't standard open houses — they're built to generate press, conversation, and results for the agents and clients involved.
In 2025 she joined SERHANT. as a licensed Realtor, adding production to the marketing expertise she's built over years. Most people in her role stay on one side of the business. She's working both.
Rachel Ryan
Vice President of Marketing, William Raveis
Two decades in luxury real estate marketing, and Rachel Ryan is still the one building new things. As VP of Marketing for William Raveis' Northeast Region, she oversees 86-plus offices across Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York — Boston, Greenwich, the Hamptons, Nantucket, Westchester — supporting 1,500 top-producing agents representing more than $4 billion in annual production.
Her signature project was building a design platform that lets agents produce on-brand marketing assets in seconds. She expanded the design library from 100 to 1,000-plus templates, built a training program to drive adoption across a 140-office network, and hit 80% independent contractor usage — a number that reflects how well the rollout was executed, not just how good the tool is. William Raveis named her Entrepreneur of the Year for the work. She also automated the company's awards recognition process, increasing staff efficiency and driving companywide recognition up significantly.
Beyond internal operations, she manages exclusive sponsorships with the Boston Red Sox and the Nantucket by Design event with the Nantucket Historical Association. The Inman Golden I Club's Top Luxury Brokerage recognition she helped earn now appears in 140 office windows and more than 800,000 mailed pieces.
Danielle Hammett
Senior Innovation and Communications Specialist, Austin Board of REALTORS® (ABoR) & Unlock MLS
When NAR-mandated MLS policy changes hit in 2024, thousands of Texas agents needed clear guidance fast. Danielle Hammett ran that communication. As the strategic lead for marketing, communications, and innovation at the Austin Board of REALTORS® and Unlock MLS, she led the "Right Here, Right Now" campaign — guiding real estate professionals through significant operational shifts with enough clarity that Unlock MLS came out of the moment as a trusted voice rather than a source of confusion.
She also led the launch and positioning of the Unlock MLS brand itself, moving the organization toward a more modern, subscriber-focused identity. Beyond brand work, she's overseen crisis communications, the marketing launch of Flex Listings, and the implementation of Zendesk to modernize member support. She served as 2023 Chair for the NAR Communications Directors nationally.
A fifth-generation Central Texan, she brings both deep local roots and a clear sense of where the industry is headed. The combination shows up in work that tends to hold up under pressure.
Aaron Grushow
Senior Marketing Manager, Luxury Presence
Most people running social media for a real estate platform have never sold a home. Aaron Grushow has. Working as Senior Marketing Manager at Luxury Presence — a platform serving more than 18,000 agents — he creates content that earns agent trust through specificity rather than polish, because he knows firsthand what agents actually care about versus what sounds good in a caption. He built a 1.3 million TikTok following on the same principle: understand the audience specifically, then create for them directly.
The results show it. In Q1 2026, Luxury Presence hit record audience growth across Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, with engagement rates more than five times the industry benchmark — managed by a lean team running on systems built to last, not one-off posts built to perform.
He also hosts webinars and workshops to share what he's learned with agents across the industry. The knowledge doesn't stay inside the company.
Josh Balcos
Director of Marketing, Epique Realty
When Josh Balcos joined Epique Realty as Director of Marketing, the brand needed more than a refresh — it needed architecture. He built it, developing distinct identities for Epique Estates, Epique CRE, Epique Land, Epique Teams, and the brokerage's diversity networks, each tailored to its market while staying connected to Epique's broader agent-first identity.
Less than a year in, he was handed the 2026 Epique Shareholders Summit — a high-stakes, one-day event for the brokerage's agents and leadership. He ran the whole thing: agenda design, presenter coaching, vendor coordination, livestream direction, and a professionally printed event magazine. C-level founders were on stage. Nothing went sideways.
That kind of trust in a first senior role is earned, not given. Inman recognized it too — he took home an All-Star Award for Marketing, a hard credential in any year, but especially in your first.
Mortgage and Finance
Peter Yoder
Founder and CEO, Series Homes
Duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes make up 7% of U.S. housing stock. Less than 1.5% of owner-occupied purchase mortgages go toward them. Peter Yoder thinks that gap is one of the most overlooked opportunities in American homeownership — and built a company to close it.
As founder and CEO of Series Homes, a mortgage fintech operating in Texas and Florida, he's building the infrastructure to turn 2-4 unit properties into a mainstream path for first-time, middle-income buyers. Federal programs already allow purchases with as little as 0-5% down and let buyers count 75% of projected rental income toward qualification. Most buyers — and most agents — don't know that. Series Homes fixes that by prequalifying every eligible listing and calculating net monthly cost after rental income before a buyer is even in the picture.
A decade in housing finance across acquisitions, credit, and portfolio management gives Peter the credibility to build this. The buyers who stand to benefit most are why he did.
Eric Krattenstein
Managing Director, American Heritage Lending, LLC
Non-QM lending doesn't get a lot of attention until the market shifts and suddenly everyone needs it. Eric Krattenstein has been building in that space for the past two years as Managing Director of Retail and Director of Marketing at American Heritage Lending — growing the company's DSCR, Bridge, and alternative documentation programs while strengthening national broker and investor relationships.
What makes him unusual is that he holds both the production and marketing roles simultaneously — which means the campaigns he runs are built around what's actually closing, not what sounds good in a press release. He's used that alignment to lift AHL's visibility through targeted campaigns, educational webinars, and industry engagement that reinforce the firm's reputation for execution.
He's also put structured coaching and performance expectations in place across his teams — the kind of operational discipline that tends to compound quietly until the numbers make it obvious.
Anthony Jackson
Vice President, Finance & Operations, Windermere Signature Properties
Sacramento born, Fresno educated, Dallas recruited — and then brought back home. Anthony Jackson's path to Vice President of Finance & Operations at Windermere Signature Properties took him through Guarantee Real Estate and Ebby Halliday, one of the largest independent brokerages in the country, before he returned to Greater Sacramento to step into the role left by Lyon Real Estate's longtime CFO.
His responsibilities run deep — finance, operations, property management, and mortgage oversight locally, plus leadership contributions across Windermere's network of more than 300 offices and 6,500 agents. He's also a key figure in industry organizations including Leading Real Estate Companies of the World and The Realty Alliance.
Outside the office he helps lead a foundation that has awarded more than $1.6 million in grants to local nonprofits, and has helped drive more than 122,000 coat donations to the community since the program began. The professional track record is strong. The rest of it is what makes him worth knowing.
Technology and Data
Reza Sardeha
Founder, Anyone.com
Most real estate technology adds a layer on top of an old process. Reza Sardeha is replacing the process. As founder of Anyone.com, he's building what he believes is a fully digital, end-to-end transaction infrastructure — not another tool bolted onto an outdated workflow, but a reimagining of how real estate deals actually get done, globally.
Charlotte Brown
Vice President of Product & Design, Qualia
Millions of real estate closings run through Qualia's platform. Charlotte Brown's fingerprints are on every one of them. At 34, working as Vice President of Product and Design, she launched Qualia Clear in September 2025 — an intelligent system that automates title and escrow workflows — to record-breaking adoption rates. Months later she shipped version 2.0, which doesn't just assist closers but proactively takes action on their behalf, cutting file processing time by 35–50%. By year's end, Qualia Clear is forecasted to automate 80% of title and escrow work.
She also relaunched Qualia Connect as a branded, multi-channel communications platform, and is leading the complex migration of Old Republic National Title — one of the industry's largest underwriters — onto Qualia's platform, already live across Oregon.
She's spoken at nearly 10 industry conferences in the past year on practical applications of this technology. The talks are consistently highly rated. The products speak for themselves.
Liv Esfandiari
Vice President of Customer Experience & Operations, SkySlope
Nine years ago, Liv Esfandiari joined SkySlope in Customer Success. Today, as Vice President of Customer Experience and Operations, she owns retention, expansion, and customer performance across the entire business — a scope she earned by consistently taking on the hardest problems as the company scaled under Fidelity National Financial.
The results are concrete. Under her leadership, SkySlope exceeded revenue targets by double digits, reduced churn more than 20% below forecast, and maintained customer satisfaction above 95%. She also led the integration of SkySlope Books — a newly acquired product — building the processes, team alignment, and go-to-market execution needed to turn an acquisition into a functioning part of the business.
She finds gaps, builds structure around them, and moves on to the next one. After nine years, the pattern hasn't changed — just the scale.
Weston Conway
Chief Revenue Officer, Closinglock
More than $2 trillion moves through real estate transactions every year on systems that haven't meaningfully changed in decades. Weston Conway is one of the people working to fix that. As Chief Revenue Officer at Closinglock — one of the company's earliest hires — he leads the go-to-market strategy for a platform replacing fragmented, legacy escrow workflows with integrated digital payment infrastructure.
The numbers behind that work are hard to argue with. Closinglock has supported more than 1.75 million transactions representing over $600 billion in value across all 50 states — with zero losses or insurance claims on $3.6 billion in insured digital payment volume. In 2025 alone, SecurePay volume hit $2.66 billion. The platform was named a Money20/20 award winner, placing it among the top fintech innovators globally.
Weston also built Closinglock's insurance-backed payment protections — $5 million in coverage per transaction — embedding the trust layer the industry needed to actually make the switch.
Miah Yoo
Vice President of Operations, The Real Estate Board of New York
New York City's residential listing data runs through REBNY's RLS — a platform serving a 14,000-plus member organization in one of the most complex real estate markets in the world. Modernizing that infrastructure without disrupting the market that depends on it is exactly the kind of work that rarely makes headlines. Miah Yoo has spent five years doing it anyway.
As Vice President of Operations, she directed the RLS migration to Matrix — the modern MLS system now serving as the platform's system of record — and positioned REBNY as one of the first Cotality implementations aligned with RESO standards. The result is a data infrastructure that's more interoperable, more compliant, and built to scale.
Before REBNY she led technology initiatives at Related Companies across large-scale commercial and retail developments. She's currently completing an Executive MBA at NYU Stern. The work is already done. The education is catching up to it.
Anna Marie Castiglioni
Head of Realtor.com Next, Realtor.com/ Move Inc
Most portal innovation is built around the industry. Anna Marie Castiglioni built something with them. As Head of Realtor.com Next, she led the launch of Realtor.com+ — a MLS-powered and co-branded environment where agents can manage client searches, share listings, plan tours, and access market insights without competing lead forms crowding the experience. The idea was straightforward: give agents a protected space inside the portal where they are the hero. The execution was fast. Realtor.com acquired Zenlist in July 2025. By October, the technology was integrated and piloting. By January 2026, the platform was live with 16 signed MLS agreements representing 122,000-plus professionals — 81% of those with accounts were already active users within a month of launch. She also negotiated partnerships with Realtors Property Resource, DocuSign, and Hover before the platform went public. The largest multi-MLS, co-branded portal collaboration in the history of online data sharing happened on her watch. Anna Marie did not simply oversee a product launch; she architected a new partnership model and is proving that portal innovation doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game.
Joshua Kuchar
Chief Revenue Officer, Showami
While the broader housing market was contracting, Showami grew revenue by more than 35% year over year. That kind of counter-cycle performance doesn't happen by accident — it happens when someone is reading the platform data carefully enough to find opportunity where others see a slowdown.
That someone is Josh Kuchar. As Chief Revenue Officer, he noticed that transaction patterns on Showami's agent showing platform pointed to a segment nobody was chasing: property managers and landlords facing the same scheduling friction as traditional sales agents. He built solutions for them. That expansion now accounts for more than 30% of all platform activity. Under his direction, Showami's user base grew from 38,000 to more than 210,000 — a 453% increase — while transaction volume surged 291%.
His operating question is simple: who hasn't received our help yet? He validates the answer against platform data, then builds toward it. It's a straightforward framework that keeps producing results.
Astghik Abrahamyan
Sr. Product Designer, Purlin Co.
Ninety percent fewer inbound inquiries during contract-to-close. $350 less cost per transaction. Buyers, sellers, and agents getting answers in real time, at any hour. That's what good product design looks like when it's actually working — and it's what Astghik Abrahamyan has been building at Purlin.
As Lead Designer at Purlin — the platform formed through the merger of Purlin and Final Offer in early 2026 — she designed a document creation and review experience that ties detailed model outputs directly to human expert workflows. Not a chatbot. Not an annotation layer. A purpose-built environment where the technology surfaces what matters and the professional acts on it with full context. For an industry that runs on compliance and paperwork, that's a meaningful rethink.
She also designed the agent-client collaboration experience inside Purlin Match, where the platform works in the background — reading intent, surfacing properties, flagging signals — while the agent and client work together in the foreground. The technology does the heavy lifting without making the experience feel like watching a machine run. That balance is hard to get right. She got it right.
Brendan Fairbanks
Founder & CEO, Perchwell
When Perchwell enters a new market, the team shows up as a guest. That's not a tagline — it's how Brendan Fairbanks runs the company. The platform's product roadmap is co-built with brokerage and MLS customers who have direct input into what gets built and a direct line to the product team. When transitions happen, Perchwell staff travel onsite to help.
Brendan founded Perchwell in New York City after identifying a gap between how real estate professionals work and the technology available to them. What began as advanced analytics has grown into a full MLS platform — 70% of the team dedicated to research and development, backed by top-tier venture capital and industry investors. The company now partners with some of the largest MLS organizations in the country and is deploying to more this year.
Most technology companies tell the industry what it should want. Brendan asks what it needs, then builds it. The difference shows up in how agents and MLS organizations actually use the platform.
Sunny Ramamurthy
Director of Product Management, Cotality Real Estate Solutions
Nearly 800,000 agents. 33 million high-intent buyers. And a platform that ranks first in repeat visits among the top real estate portals. That kind of loyalty gets built one product decision at a time — and Sunny Ramamurthy, Director of Product Management within Cotality's real estate business unit, has been making those decisions for OneHome.
Last year he integrated Roomvo's Reimagined Spaces — an industry first within an MLS system — letting buyers restyle rooms directly inside the search experience. Buyers now spend 2–3 times longer evaluating listings as a result. He also expanded OneHome into a cross-market listing network, extended it into a homeownership hub that tracks equity, documents, and maintenance after closing, and is rolling out natural language search in Q2 2026.
The focus throughout has been the same: keep the agent at the center of the home buying experience and move them from a transactional role to a long-term advisor relationship. The engagement metrics suggest it's working.
Marc-Antoine Juanéda
Director of Product Management, Agent Solutions, Cotality Real Estate Solutions
Two out of three real estate professionals in North America use Matrix. That kind of scale makes it one of the most consequential platforms in the industry — and one of the hardest to change without breaking something. Marc-Antoine Juanéda has spent the past year modernizing it anyway.
Under his leadership, Matrix gained CoreAI Listing Manager — letting agents initiate listings onsite using voice notes and photos, auto-populating up to 1,000 property characteristics and generating listing remarks enriched with neighborhood data. He also integrated LiDAR-powered floor plans that process instantly at 99.96% accuracy, eliminating the traditional 24–48 hour wait. And he's currently leading the full reconceptualization of MLS-Touch into Matrix Mobile, rebuilding the industry's most-used mobile app from the ground up.
His Matrix Plus initiative goes further — bridging MLS and CRM into a single experience with predictive analytics built in. Modernizing a platform this widely used, without losing the trust it took decades to build, is a specific kind of challenge. He's doing it.
Jay Shentu
Data QA Engineer 2, ATTOM
158 million U.S. properties. The value of that data depends entirely on how clean and trustworthy it is. Jay Shentu is one of the people making sure it holds up.
Over the past year he played a key role in ATTOM's migration from SQL Server to Snowflake — a foundational infrastructure shift toward cloud-native data delivery. He also helped build ATTOM Nexus, a platform that gives clients an unprecedented look into dataset coverage, structure, and completeness. His completeness scoring work is particularly notable: it turns data quality into a quantifiable metric clients can actually act on, rather than something they have to take on faith.
In an industry where data transparency has historically been limited, that's a meaningful shift. Jay isn't just testing data — he's changing how quality gets defined, communicated, and experienced across the platform.
Jake Hamilton
SVP of Product & Strategy, Lone Wolf Technologies
While Lone Wolf Technologies went through its most significant leadership transition in company history — new CEO, expanded C-suite — someone had to keep the product moving. At 33, Jake Hamilton was that person.
A 2025 Inman Future Leader honoree, he shipped four major product launches in the year since: Lone Wolf Relationships, Deal Tracker, a Foundation Dashboard built on actual business data, and an API Portal that opened Foundation's architecture to outside developers and technology partners. That last one matters most. Most platform companies build walls. Jake built doors — inviting the broader ecosystem to plug in rather than compete. Integration partners are going live within weeks, a speed that's drawing attention from industry veterans.
He also secured a five-year strategic partnership with First Multiple Listing Service in March 2025, reshaping transaction management for more than 60,000 members. Corporate strategy, M&A, partnerships, data management, and customer support all sit under his purview. Forty percent of his work involves confidential strategic initiatives. The Foundation platform consolidates what was fragmented. He's building what connects the rest.
Chris Giannos
Founder & CEO, Humaniz (in February 2026, LPT Aperture Holdings, LPT Realty’s parent company, announced a definitive agreement to acquire Humaniz)
He started in ad sales at Zillow at 19. By his early thirties, Chris Giannos had scaled an independent real estate team from 2 to 250-plus agents, hit $1.2 billion in sales volume, couldn't find tools that solved the operational problems he was running into — and built them himself.
That became Humaniz, a recruiting infrastructure platform designed to replace manual, fragmented talent acquisition with repeatable, measurable systems. Over three years it has facilitated more than 75,000 agent introductions and supported over $5 billion in closed volume nationwide — 28,000 introductions in the past year alone. In February 2026, LPT Aperture Holdings announced a definitive agreement to acquire Humaniz. Giannos remains CEO, with the platform staying brokerage-agnostic and the 2026 roadmap expanding into a broader operating system for modern brokerages and teams.
HousingWire named him a 2026 Rising Star. His recruiting training is now part of the Tom Ferry Speaker's Bureau curriculum. The arc from Zillow ad sales to acquired founder took about thirteen years.
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