The National Association of Realtors has just announced two major new hires to influential leadership positions: Shannon McGahn, a former Congressional staff leader and former Treasury Department official in the Trump administration, will become NAR’s new senior vice president of government affairs, and Victoria Gillespie, a Realtor and former executive at several credit unions, will serve as chief marketing and communications officer.
McGahn (pictured at right above) is the first woman to hold the position in NAR’s 110-year-long history and starts on Oct. 15. She formerly served as the staff director of the Committee on Financial Services in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Before that, she worked as a counselor at the U.S. Department of Treasury. She is also married to outgoing top White House lawyer Don McGahn.
McGahn takes over from NAR’s influential top lobbyist Jerry Giovaniello, a 37-year veteran who helped oversee the trade group’s growing influence on Capitol Hill, who is retiring at the end of the year.
Gillespie (left in picture above), meanwhile, previously worked as senior VP of enterprise marketing and communications for Northwest Federal Credit Union, before that, as senior VP of the Realtors Federal Credit Union, and before that, she owned and operated her own real estate agency for 12 years.
Gillespie starts with NAR effective today.