What NAR Leadership Taught Me About Courage
By Lisa R. Conner
There are seasons of life that only make sense in hindsight.
At the time, you are simply trying to survive them. You are putting on your clothes, catching your flights, showing up in the room, smiling when appropriate, taking notes, and trying not to fall apart in public. You do not yet understand that you are standing in a chapter that will live in you for decades.
Years ago, I was chosen for the NAR (National Association of REALTORS) Leadership Academy Class of 2009. At the time, more than a million REALTORS were part of our industry, and I was one of only twenty-seven selected for that nine-month national program. I was also the first REALTOR from Alaska to receive that honor.
Even now, writing those words catches in my throat.
It was one of the greatest professional honors of my life.
And it arrived during one of the hardest personal years I had ever lived through.
That year, my mother-in-law, my stepmother, and my mother all passed away. My personal life was in complete shambles. Grief had moved in and rearranged the furniture of my inner world. Everything felt unstable. And yet there I was, boarding planes, traveling around the country, sitting in rooms with high-level leaders I admired, trying to hold myself together.
It was such a strange and sacred juxtaposition: devastation and distinction, side by side.
I remember standing at the podium, shaking in my boots.
I remember being in Chicago, terrified to leave the hotel by myself. It seems almost funny now, but at the time it felt enormous. One step out the door. One block. One breath. One small act of courage. I took the first step anyway.
That program changed me.
Not because I suddenly became the most polished speaker in the room. Not because I stopped being afraid. But because I was surrounded by people who showed me what leadership looked like, inside and out. They were confident, thoughtful, articulate, and deeply committed to serving not just the industry but their peers. I studied them closely.
I was watching.
I was watching how they spoke.
How they carried themselves.
How they advocated.
How they listened.
How they stood in rooms that intimidated me and seemed to belong there.
And somewhere along the way, without even realizing it, I began to grow.
That is the thing about being in the presence of people who embody something you long to become: they can mentor you without ever formally knowing they are doing it. Their way of being leaves an imprint. Their courage lends you some of its shape. Their example becomes part of your internal architecture.
At the time, I did not yet have language like that.
I only knew I admired them.
I only knew I wanted to stretch.
I only knew that something in me was being asked to rise, even while another part of me was spinning with grief.
A couple of years ago, during breast cancer treatment, life paused again.
And in that pause, I found myself reflecting on so many chapters of my life, including the Leadership Academy. I thought about those rooms, those leaders, those flights, that younger version of me from Alaska trying so hard to be brave. I thought about what it meant to be honored at that level while privately carrying so much sorrow. And I found myself wondering, in the most honest way:
What else could I do with my life?
That question became a doorway.
Casa Renae was born in that pause, but like most things that matter, it had rooted much earlier than I realized.
It had roots in grief.
In leadership.
In trembling.
In watching.
In taking the first step out of the hotel, when I was terrified.
In learning that courage does not always look bold. Sometimes it looks like showing up wobbly. Sometimes it looks like staying in the room. Sometimes it looks like allowing yourself to be changed by people who never knew you were studying their example that closely.
I think that is one of the quiet miracles of life.
We are shaping one another all the time.
Often, we never fully know whose courage is becoming part of someone else’s story.
To those leaders from that chapter of my life: thank you.
Thank you for your leadership and mentorship, even when you may not have realized I was watching.
And to the woman I was then — grieving, honored, overwhelmed, terrified, trying anyway — thank you for taking the first step out the door.
You had no idea where it would lead.
But I do now.
And I am still walking.
Living in curiosity,
Lisa
Lisa R. Conner is a writer, coach, REALTOR, and entrepreneur based in Alaska. She is the author of Casa Renae: Outgrowing Your Story & Coming Home to Yourself, and writes Fireweed & Flannel as a place for honest reflections on reinvention, courage, identity, grief, real estate, and the wild beauty of becoming.
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