Five Trailblazing Female Leaders in Real Estate and PropTech
At the intersection of real estate and tech, there’s a wave of fierce and future-minded women shaking up – and improving – their respective industries. Both independently and collectively, these trailblazers’ contributions to the communities in which they live, work and play are creating new opportunities and building a better tomorrow for us all.
April LaMon had the honor of speaking with five of these impressive female leaders on the Alosant Innovator Series podcast, each of whom detailed their career journeys and allowed us to glean insights and inspiration from their achievements.
As we celebrate Women’s History Month, there’s no better time to spotlight this remarkable group of innovative and tenacious movers and shakers who are revamping the home buyer experience and resident lifestyle at mixed-use and master-planned communities.
Read a bit about each of them below, then click on their linked podcast episodes to hear their career stories, lessons and industry outlook predictions firsthand:
Monaca Onstad, President and CEO, Onplace
Monaca Onstad has a passion for lifestyle and community planning, including the design of amenities and programs for the future. Her 20+ years of experience in lifestyle community management inspired her 2022 launch of Onplace, a lifestyle and placemaking consulting firm that helps builders and developers intentionally create better amenities and experiences for their residents.
Throughout the pandemic, Monaca recognized the increased desire for, and importance of, a strong sense of community. “Now, more than ever, community residents want to feel like they belong. The lifestyle and marketing teams have opportunities to create a really rich experience by planning properly for their current and future residents and leveraging the right technology to communicate with them,” says Monaca.
Along with communication, intentionality is at the forefront of Monaca and her team’s efforts.
“Designing well means understanding the needs, wants and nuanced behaviors of the target audience and then building spaces specifically for them. The work consists of understanding demographic and psychographic data and intentionally seeing the world from the shoppers’ and residents’ perspective. Not many are doing this now and I think we have a real opportunity to change the industry and make it feel more community-first.”
Nicole Godfrey, Global President, Runway
Nicole Godfrey has found inspiration everywhere, from her faith and pets to the innovative people around her who make big things happen. After moving from Australia to Dallas, Nicole learned to see and appreciate her own environment from different perspectives – a quality that would inspire her future career endeavors.
Nicole is the Global President of Runway, an international, award-winning inventory management, sales and marketing tool that partners with leading community developers and home builders. Established in Melbourne, Australia in 1997, the privately held company solves complex back-office challenges faced by the industry and delivers incredible home shopper experiences that increase sales velocity and conversion rates.
Most recently, Runway is leveraging the metaverse to create new, virtual and immersive home buying experiences – and Nicole notes PropTech can empower consumers when buying a home.
“Runway’s cutting-edge technology creates dollar-perfect packages that are compliant with all rules and design guidelines. Builders can generate a PDF and publish these virtual packages to websites and major portals within hours rather than weeks,” says Nicole. “By eliminating the typical manual and repetitive effort, Runway has been successful in getting builders what they need faster, more efficiently and from a single source of data.”
In 2018, Runway released the first version of Homebuyer, a program that enables consumers to access, build and customize these virtual packages for their home on their own.
Debra Wyatte, President, WE Consulting
Debra Wyatte has observed large shifts in the amenities and lifestyle programs that communities are operating in a post-COVID world. “Consumers are now more aware of their needs than ever before,” she says. “As a result, communities are discovering new ways to meet buyer expectations and activate lifestyle programming to attract buyers.”
As president of WE Consulting, Debra works with communities to examine and align the many aspects of their projects with their respective brand pillars. She also assists communities with measuring and analyzing their work – a must in today’s heavily data-driven world.
“It’s important for master-planned communities to create a brand that evokes an emotional connection amongst residents and prospective home buyers,” she adds.
As Gen Z buyers enter the market, Debra recognizes the industry may face some new challenges in sustainability, conversation, branding and storytelling – pillars she anticipates will be of increased buyer importance moving forward.
Mollie Carmichael, Principal, Zonda
As a Principal on the Advisory Team at Zonda, Mollie Carmichael covers an entire spectrum of research, development, home building, marketing, strategy, acquisitions, and more. She began her career in development, then shifted to home building before finding a role grounded in consulting, which combined her experiences with her passion for consulting and market research.
Most recently, Mollie has been focusing on the Metaverse, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)’s ever-changing impact on how homes are shown, bought and sold – another subsequent result of the COVID-19 impact.
“I was introduced to VR by my son,” recalls Mollie. Today, she has a keen eye for seeing how, with proper application, VR can help build buyer confidence in potential residents, de-risking their decisions by providing a life-like, easy-to-navigate experience that is accessible on any device.
“I see a large opportunity for master-planned communities to build virtual environments where potential residents can walk the community, explore amenities, view model homes and more – right from their desktop or VR headset.”
Christen Johnson, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Johnson Development Corp.
Since 2016, Christen Johnson has served as Senior Vice President of Marketing for Johnson Development Corp. (JDC) - one of the nation’s leading residential and commercial land development companies - directing the company’s strategic brand management and overall marketing efforts.
Throughout her decades of real estate and marketing experience, she’s witnessed first-hand how drastically collaboration efforts between marketing and development teams have changed.
Now, a new standard for the future exists, in which the most successful communities craft a story – a fabric in which residents are excited to be a part of and represent. This expectation catalyzed development, lifestyle, operations, marketing, and other key teams to collaborate before stakes go in the ground to ensure that all pillars of the project are connected, creating this succinct experience for the home shopper, guest, and resident.
Combining its commitments to sustainability and community design, JDC is leveraging technology like community branded apps to extend their brands and activate resident engagement, bringing events, dinner reservations, digital access credentials, information and much more all into one branded mobile program.
Christen’s favorite part of her role is bringing sketches and early ideas to life, knowing that people and their families will enjoy the community for decades to come. “The use of tasteful, usable and relevant technology in communities is what ignities lifestyle, programming, and operations.”
Suffice it to say, the impacts made by these women are not only influencing the future of real estate and PropTech, but also that of female leaders in their fields. May their combined successes serve as an important reminder that there’s nothing women can’t achieve when they dream big, work hard, stay the course – and enjoy the journey.
Happy Women’s History Month,
April LaMon, CEO & Co-Founder, Alosant
