When I received the news that REMAX co-founder Gail Liniger had passed away, I found myself thinking about a woman I had only the opportunity to meet once, yet, in many ways, a woman who has influenced my entire career.
I met Gail at a private event during a REMAX Broker Owner Convention in Nashville four years ago. I didn’t have a long conversation with her. I didn’t need one. You knew who Gail Liniger was.
There was a strength about her. A grit balanced by grace that seemed to tell the story before she ever had to.
Building a game-changing real estate business
Dave and Gail Liniger set out to build something different in real estate in 1973. The idea behind REMAX challenged traditional brokerage models popular at the time. This idea allowed productive agents to have more control over their business and keep more of what they earned.
It wasn’t easy in the beginning, and it certainly wasn’t a guaranteed success. But Dave and Gail dug in and figured it out. Gail wasn’t standing on the sidelines while Dave built REMAX. She was the company’s first corporate employee.
She moved into leadership, eventually becoming president, CEO and vice chair. What started as an idea in Denver grew into one of the most recognizable real estate brands in the world.
For me, Gail’s legacy goes well beyond REMAX. She was sitting at the table and deciding at a time when women weren’t routinely occupying those seats. She wasn’t working in real estate. She was helping build one of the industry’s most influential companies.
And she helped create opportunities for other women to do the same.
This is the part of her story that resonates so deeply with me.
As a woman, a broker-owner and a business owner, I’ve spent plenty of years learning to trust my voice, defend an idea, make the hard call, dig in when something isn’t working and simply figure it out.
Gail was doing that for more than 50 years. She didn’t wait for someone to tell her she belonged at the table. She took her seat. She spoke up. She led, and most importantly, she helped make room for the women who would come after her.
I am incredibly honored to have spent my career in an organization shaped and led by a woman like Gail. Her leadership wasn’t about being the loudest in the room. It was about having the strength to use her voice, the grit to stay when things were difficult and the grace to bring others along with her.
There is something incredibly poignant about losing Gail at this moment in REMAX’s history. Our company is beginning a new chapter. Leadership changes. Companies will evolve, business models will change, the industry will change. But foundations matter.
After five decades, the company that Gail helped build continues to allow entrepreneurs to build a business of their own. And for the women who have become agents, team leaders, brokers, owners and executives along the way, Gail left us something even bigger.
She didn’t just tell us we belonged at the table. She showed us. And then made the table bigger for everyone who came next.
That’s one hell of a legacy.
Rest well, Gail. And thank you.
Emily Askin is a broker-owner with REMAX at Home and REMAX Preferred. Connect with her on Instagram.
