Growing up in rural upstate New York, I spent weekends sketching floor plans for homes I imagined designing. I thought I’d become an architect—but what fascinated me wasn’t the buildings themselves, it was how people would live inside them. That sense of design and possibility became the foundation for my real-estate career: helping clients imagine the life they want and then finding the space that makes it real.

In 2008 I joined Marcus & Millich...