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Nykia Wright, interim CEO of the National Association of Realtors, may not have direct experience in real estate. During her entire career, however, she has been focused on constant disruption.
That made her a good pick for the moment to lead staff at NAR through the most tumultuous time in the industry’s modern history, she said during a recent podcast interview.
Wright recently sat down with a team of friendly interviewers from the Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered podcast, including NextHome CEO James Dwiggins and NextHome CSO Keith Robinson. Dwiggins has been a vocal ally of NAR through the past year, offering critiques while also calling for support of the organization.
Wright has declined through NAR to sit for an interview during her roughly eight months as the organization’s CEO, so the podcast offered a rare glimpse into the staff leader of the organization at a critical time for NAR and the industry at large.
Whereas NAR President Kevin Sears has granted multiple interviews and appeared before large crowds during his time as head of leadership, including appearing on stage at Inman Connect Las Vegas last month, Wright has worked to lead staff behind the scenes.
Dwiggins asked Wright whether NAR’s brokering of a settlement, which will include paying $418 million in the coming years and making sweeping business practice changes that take effect on Saturday, was the right decision.
“Absolutely, unequivocally,” Wright said. “We have to understand what we were faced with. It’s not like we had an entire option set. Of the options that we were given, this was the path that made the most sense for us. Now, that said, we are not resting on our laurels.”
She acknowledged that members were upset about changes that have engulfed the organization and the real estate industry.
“Some people will take a while and some people may never come back,” Wright said, “but we are not going to count the day before evening and assume that that’s true.”
She repeatedly urged NAR members to “lean in” and engage with the organization.
Wright didn’t mention any NAR detractors by name, including the American Real Estate Association, a new real estate organization formed by Compass agent Jason Haber and The Agency CEO Mauricio Umansky.
However, she said NAR is proactively working to do what it can to win back disgruntled members.
“There’s a saying, ‘listen to the whispers so you don’t have to hear the screams,’” Wright said. “So the whispers of people wanting to leave is where we put our head on a swivel, get out there and start figuring out how we can bring those people back into the fold.”
“When people are leaning out right now, it concerns me a little bit because their voice is not part of a future solution,” Wright said. “Being in business for yourself but not by yourself, when you leave the association, I consider [leaning out] going into the ‘by yourself’ type of box. And I think that we are truly stronger together, and we just have to continue to prove that.”
Wright also didn’t mention a new class action lawsuit filed earlier this week by agents and brokers in Michigan against NAR, but she did appear to address critics more broadly.
“I understand that people are frustrated with things, but bring those frustrations in house so that we can be the best organization that we can be,” Wright said. “Because we’re confusing consumers, we’re confusing plaintiffs’ attorneys, we’re confusing the Department of Justice, we’re confusing all of these people based on how many followers we have and how many users we have.”
The interview also gave the public and NAR’s 1.5 million members perhaps their most thorough insight into Wright’s background and allowed them to hear from her about why it’s what the organization needed for this moment in time.
“I probably was not built for yesterday and who knows what I’m built for in the future,” Wright said. “But right now, it makes sense based upon my background.”
Wright’s background
Wright is from Atlanta and studied finance at Carnegie Mellon University before moving to Europe and studying international business at the University of Cambridge. She returned home and eventually got her Master of Business Administration degree at Dartmouth.
She called herself a “business doctor,” working as a consultant for private and public companies, including unnamed real estate companies. That consulting work, and a later position as CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave her experience in industries that are constantly being disrupted, Wright said.
“The last consulting firm that I was part of, there was a sign at the front door; it was six feet tall by about three feet wide,” Wright said. “The sign said, ‘While you are reading this, your business model is being disrupted.’ That helped us understand and develop a discipline for when we were helping our clients.”
Wright also said an immediate focus when she joined NAR as its interim CEO was on the organization’s communications strategy, saying real estate was facing its “Y2K moment.”
“Making sure that we are able to speak to all of those audiences and companies at the same time is a very, very difficult task,” Wright said. “That’s not an excuse. But that was one of the primary challenges that we had to face.”
Wright pointed out that while she didn’t have direct experience as a real estate operator, her skills and business background are complementary to those of Kevin Sears, a long-time broker from Massachusetts.
“One additional person having a real estate background is not going to move the needle,” Wright said. “But if you’ve got someone with decades of real estate experience and someone with decades of experience … outside of the real estate industry but having adjacent experience, that is a really, really powerful thing.”
When asked whether she hoped to stay on past the end of the year, Wright was somewhat reticent.
“I will say that I will not change anything as it relates to how my life has been designed,” Wright said. “I bloom where I’ve been planted, and I let the universe take care of the rest of the details.”
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