Energy to Spare
A few years after becoming licensed, Alexa Kebalo Hughes, e-PRO, decided to get involved with the newly formed Young Professionals Network at her local association. Before she’d even attended a meeting, she expressed a desire to chair the group. “A friend who was [association] president said, ‘We need your energy,’ ” says Hughes, 29. That energy is apparent in the YPN events she helps to develop, which benefit the local Boys & Girls Club, a domestic violence shelter, and other nonprofits. Through these activities, she’s built “relationships for life” and a regular stream of real estate clients. Hughes says she learned the value of hard work from her entrepreneurial relatives: Her mother was a real estate agent, her father owned an electrical company, one grandfather built a business as a carpenter, and the other owned a printing company.