At a DC cocktail party in the ‘80s, now super broker (then pension actuary) Audrey Cramer was introduced to commercial real estate. During a 45-minute chat (kudos for talking that long—we get bored when a Facebook status goes two lines), she was advised that she’d be good in an industry that needed women. When she found out how much brokers made, she was hooked. The Cushman & Wakefield vice chairman became the first woman the firm hired. Today, her deals, including a 1.1M SF lease for the SEC in 2002 and the 625k SF for the Corporate Executive Board in '04 (the largest private sector deal in DC) are legendary. What women bring: less ego, more practicality. “They have to be—they’re the moms of the world, they take care of the kids, the household,” she tells us. Prime example: When repping a landlord for 130k SF, there was an enormous fight over the building signage—the landlord wanted 4-inch lettering, the tenant, 6. She suggested 5—problem solved.

Role models help. Audrey says her mother worked as an executive secretary for United Technologies, but still was a great mom. Another mentor, McArthurGlen’s Julia Calabrese, sat her down one day and said, “You are better than you know. And you can really go for it and stop worrying about everybody else, and just do it.” From that minute on, “It was like being freed.” She’s working on a big Verizon transaction as well as some law firm deals, among others. She’s also a new grandmother—that’s 10-month-old Eleanor in Audrey’s arms. Her advice to women starting out: Grow important clients; not every client is 50k SF out of the box. Be persistent, work hard. “Innately, women are better at this than men. We have more empathy, and we are more detail oriented.”