As Compass moves forward following the closing of its industry-shaking acquisition of Anywhere, the brokerage’s founder and CEO announced that Neda Navab, his former chief of staff and most recently leader of brokerage operations, has been appointed the new president of Compass Real Estate.
With the company reorganizing to absorb Anywhere and Reffkin taking the title of chairman and CEO of the new holding company, Compass International Holdings, Navab will seemingly take on a role “exclusively on leading and supporting our…real estate professionals nationwide,” Reffkin said in a social media post yesterday.
“Over the past eight years, across multiple leadership roles, Neda has traveled around the country listening and learning from our people, building the trust, experience, and relationships that uniquely position her to protect and strengthen what makes Compass special,” the company wrote in a separate post.
Navab first joined Compass in 2018, having previously worked for tech giant Google on housing-related projects—specifically Sidewalk Labs, which works on smart cities. She holds an MBA from Harvard and a BA in economics from Columbia.
Back in November, Navab was one of a handful of Compass executives who took the stand in federal court in New York as part of the brokerage’s ongoing lawsuit against Zillow. There, she addressed the company’s private listing strategy from her perspective working with agents around the country, saying that she interacts with “thousands of agents a month.”
In a Q&A posted to Compass’s website, Navab talked about her background as a second-generation immigrant, whose mother became a real estate agent after fleeing Iran. She compared supporting Compass agents to work she did in Rwanda supporting female small business owners and entrepreneurs.
In a separate interview with the Global Mentor Network back in 2023, Navab connected all that experience back to the goal of homeownership.
“I love that a piece of what we get to do is support these entrepreneurs who are supporting their clients to attain the American dream, homeownership. What feels more authentic to that vision than getting to own a small slice of this country yourself?” she said.
