It has only been 51 years since the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, which made it illegal for lenders to refuse to give a woman a mortgage based on her marital status, opening the door to homeownership for single or divorced women across the country. As the National Association of Realtors (NAR) looks ahead to its 2027 leadership team, the organization is preparing to be headed by two female leaders for the first time in its nearly 120 year history.
On Saturday afternoon at NAR’s 2025 NXT conference in Houston, Tammy Noll-Adams, the 2025 president of the Women’s Council of Realtors sat down for a fireside chat with NAR CEO Nykia Wright and NAR president-elect Christine Hansen to discuss women in leadership and their journeys to the top.
For both women, one of the most important lessons they have learned over the course of their careers and leadership journeys is the importance of authenticity, vulnerability and confidence in knowing yourself.
“I think one of the biggest misperceptions about leadership is that you have to be the avatar of someone else, that you don’t have to bring your authentic self,” Wright said.
However, she acknowledged that the other people within the leadership team and especially those above you hold a significant amount of responsibility to implicitly and explicitly give you permission to be yourself.
“The amount of energy it takes to come in hiding some aspect of yourself is exhausting,” Wright said, “There is so much you have to move as it relates to being the CEO of any company and when you waste minutes having to be someone you are not, you are taking away from your fiduciary responsibility to lead that organization.”
Wright credited her leadership team at NAR for giving her the space to be her authentic self and never questioning who she is. She believes that having this freedom will help her guide NAR to a better trajectory.
“I always say, be you from the beginning, because the real you is eventually going to show up anyway,” Hansen added.
According to Hansen and Wright, part of being your authentic self is also having the self assuredness to admit when you don’t know something.
It’s OK to say ‘I don’t know’
“There is this belief that saying ‘I don’t know’ is a third rail,” Wright said. “The more you are considerate and open about what you don’t know, the more people are willing to help you. This is not an opportunity in leadership for a lone genius. There are many people that have many different types of exposure and experience that can add a lot to your plate.”
For Hansen, leaning on her team has been invaluable in helping her become the leader that she is today.
“I used to have this huge fear of public speaking,” Hansen said. “Then I realized that I’m just going to go and deliver that best that I possibly can. I just got over myself because I don’t have to be better or greater than anyone else, I just have to be the best me.”
This, of course, requires confidence, something that can be hard for women to possess if they feel imposter syndrome or like they don’t belong at the table they are now sitting at.
Trust those who put trust in you
For Wright, who said she has never felt imposter syndrome, even if she doesn’t have the confidence yet to believe in herself, she chooses to believe in the people who believe in her.
“If someone has given you an opportunity, why are you going to cross examine that person?” Wright said. “They saw something in you that maybe you haven’t seen in yourself yet, so just ride the wave, and get competent as you go along.”
To build confidence, both women stressed the importance of ensuring that you are prepared, so that when an opportunity presents itself you are primed to take it.
“I never wanted to wake up and shake the hand of the person that I should have become,” Wright said. “There are many people with the same basket of goods I have, the same education and exposure, and I decided that I wasn’t going to witness someone else take better advantage of those things than I have.”
Both Hansen and Wright expressed their excitement for future female leaders to follow in their footsteps, but they both acknowledged that they didn’t get to these positions alone.
“When I look through the doors that I walk through today with confidence, I know there is a train of a significant legacy of women behind me that were punching down those doors,” Wright said. “I’m here because of the women before me, and I’m just happy to be one of the women to continue to sort of push those doors open.”