A question of property: Katie Griffin, President of the NAEA

Katie Griffin (pictured, right) is the President of the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) and only the second woman to have the job in the association’s 50-year history.  Half way through her time leading the NAEA, Nigel Lewis interviews her just after she flew in from a week in Chicago representing the UK. What were you doing in Chicago? I was there with NAEA Chairman Mark Hayward as well as two board members – Kirsty Finney and Natasha Rodgers from Belfast (all pictured, below). We spent five days there at the National Association of Realtors’ conference and exhibition, where the NAEA had a stand. It’s fairly intimidating; there are 22,000 delegates at the event; more than the total number of agents in the UK. Sounds like a bit of a jolly. It wasn’t. We attended half a dozen meetings every day, looked after the stand and networked hard on behalf of the NAEA – we were there as part of the Global Alliance, which includes agents from 60 countries around the world. These kinds of connections are going to be increasingly important after Brexit. Did it all go according to plan? The biggest surprise for me was that I thought…