Illustration: LaNette Behily/Real Estate News
The brokerage giant is announcing new leaders for its commercial and coaching divisions, as well as its nonprofit arm KW Cares; Tomo co-founder is stepping down.
Editor's note: In an industry with millions of agents and more than 100,000 brokerages, new leaders rise to the top every day. Here, we profile executives and other notable leaders who have recently assumed or retired from positions that impact the residential real estate industry.
KW develops leaders in the commercial, coaching and non-profit sectors
Keller Williams Realty has appointed four individuals to its executive leadership team:
Cynthia Lee is currently president of KW Commercial.
Alicia Shepherd is vice president of KW Commercial.
Cody Gibson is the vice president of coaching for KW MAPS.
Rachel Elder is vice president of development at KW Cares.
Lee and Shepherd have been promoted from other roles within KW Commercial and will continue to focus on the division's growth and marketing strategy, as well as training programs.
Lee, a Certified Commercial Investment Member, oversees KW's largest Market Center Commercial division. She joined KW in 2012 and previously served as a broker associate with Transwestern. Prior to her career in real estate, Lee spent 16 years as a television news anchor and reporter.
In addition to his role at KW, Shepherd serves as CEO of Launch Commercial Real Estate Network, works as a MAPS coach in the commercial sector, and is the founder of commercial real estate training company Nucleus Commercial.
“Commercial agents can now dream big and realize their lives in a planned way,” said Lee. “With us, agents are embarked on a journey to maximise their prosperity and productivity through unique training and live events, whilst also fostering an atmosphere of responsibility and strong culture that KW is known for,” Lee said.
Gibson is a real estate business and trainer with over 20 years of experience and has been with KW since 2011. In addition to his role as a coach with KW, he is also CEO of Portland Real Estate Group and United Home Group, which operate 125 offices in 26 states and two countries.
Elder has extensive experience in nonprofit leadership and fundraising, having previously worked as a consultant with Beacon Nonprofit Consulting. At KW Cares, he is working with the board and staff to develop new fundraising strategies.
“The work we do is transforming people's lives and making a lasting impact,” Elder said.
Tomo co-founder steps down from COO role
Cary Armstrong, who co-founded tech-enabled mortgage company Tomo in 2020, announced on LinkedIn that she is stepping down from her executive leadership role. Armstrong said she will retain her co-founder title and remain on the company's board of directors.
Armstrong and Greg Schwartz are former Zillow executives who launched a mortgage startup that recently expanded into the home-search portal space, aiming to automate and streamline the consumer loan process. “I love radically simplifying and improving things that people don't even realize existed another way,” Armstrong said in a LinkedIn post.
Tomo struggled when mortgage rates began to rise and laid off a third of its staff in 2022, but Armstrong said “things are good now” and the company plans to add more staff, a prospect that made her “sick of sleep.”
“At heart I am an artisan who likes to invent and experiment, not a general looking to add another brigade to the army. Rather than relying on people for an archaic process, I will replace that process with one that requires no human input whatsoever,” she wrote.
Armstrong didn't provide details about his next move, but said he wants to explore the intersection of housing, climate, transportation and urban planning, and focus his energies on what excites him most: “making something out of nothing.”