Before real estate, I had a completely different career. I was a corporate attorney for an oil and gas company in Russia. Good job, growing career, no plans to change any of it.
Then one day I applied for the U.S. green card lottery. Just once. And I won.
So I moved to America and started my professional life over. I went into tech, became a QA engineer, and worked at Apple for five years.
When I got pregnant, I wanted something different. Real estate felt natural. I loved contracts, negotiations, complicated processes, and working with people.
What I found is that I love the hard side of this work. The contracts. The negotiations. The moment something goes wrong and you have to protect your client and still get the deal done.
That's still the part I love most.
