Kamini Lane has been a leader at some of the largest real estate brokerages in the industry, and her career journey has currently culminated with an as-of-now three-year stint as president and CEO of Coldwell Banker Realty.
In 2025, she restructured Coldwell Banker’s executive leadership team to prioritize leadership from real estate professionals working in the field. Viewing agents as one of the brokerage’s customers, Lane has prioritized the job-assisting resources Coldwell Banker offers its agents. In 2025, she led the rollout of the company’s AI-powered Transaction Concierge service, and oversaw strong agent retention.
Her leadership earned her a spot as an Influencer in RISMedia’s 2026 class of Real Estate Newsmakers, and she recently spoke with RISMedia about not only her accomplishments, but how she intends to keep momentum going into 2026 no matter how the market shifts, and how—in honor of Women’s History Month—being a woman drew her to real estate in hopes of offering a model for women behind her to excel.
Devin Meenan: How does it feel to be named a 2026 RISMedia Newsmaker?
Kamini Lane: It’s such an honor. It feels like such an honor to be recognized and I think largely because it’s an opportunity to highlight the brand and the amazing things that we’re doing at Coldwell Banker Realty, all in service of our phenomenal real estate agents.
DM: One of your chief accomplishments last year was launching the company’s Transaction Concierge. Can you talk about how you led that rollout?
KL: Transaction Concierge is a full-service contract to close transaction administration available to all of our agents for free. It was born out of the realization that real estate is a relationship business. We want our agents to be focused on their “zone of genius” as we call it, right? Whether that is forging new relationships with clients, helping them find their dream home or creating a marketing strategy for selling their home, that’s what we want our agents to be focused on.
We created the service to take all of that paperwork off their plate—it’s basically a no-brainer. There’s no cost to it. We have an entire team of contract to close experts that does all of that work for them so that they can continue to focus on their zone of genius.
DM: Going off the idea of real estate as a relationship business, how would you say you solicit feedback or get impressions from your agents as to what is working for them and what their respective “zone of genius” is?
KL: The old-fashioned way—talk to them, of course. I spend a lot of time traveling, a lot of time actually in the market, and I do a ton of virtual meetings with agents—whether it’s large group sales rallies or small group meetings. I have something called the CEO Council, the top 100 agents at Coldwell Banker Realty, and we meet regularly. It’s 100 agents, but we meet in smaller groups so that I hear from them directly.
Another thing is, when I first started in this role, I reorganized our leadership structure to really flatten the hierarchy so that the Coldwell Banker executive team is made up of field leaders—the people who are literally living and breathing the agent experience every single day. There’s not that jump between sitting at the leadership table and understanding what an agent’s day to day looks like. I wanted us to be making decisions based on real field input.
DM: What would you point to as the most positive result from having that sort of field-based leadership?
KL: I think that was the first step in a true turnaround of Coldwell Banker Realty. In modernizing the brand, modernizing the service experience and doing all of that directly from customer feedback, the customer being our agent, we saw a growth in recruiting—more agents wanting to come to Coldwell Banker Realty near record highs in terms of retention. We were able to grow revenue in a flat real estate market. We were able to grow profit in a flat real estate market. Everything from a financial turnaround to a culture turnaround to an operational turnaround really started with that first step of reorganizing our leadership team and ensuring that we were making decisions with the right input.
DM: What are you projecting for the real estate market, and, regardless of how the market ultimately turns out, how are you planning to keep those trends that you’ve established going in terms of agent retention and recruitment?
KL: We’re definitely projecting this to be a growth year. Modest growth, low single digits, is what we’re looking at for the year. Ideally, that growth will be driven by units rather than price. We have seen prices sort of stabilizing over the course of the first few months of the year, so price stabilizing, units growing and overall, low single-digit volume increases. But I think that’s still going to be a great thing for the market and for agents.
A lot of it will depend on what’s happening with interest rates, where we’ve seen a lot of fluctuation just over the last two weeks. Three or four weeks ago, we saw a five handle for the first time in three years, and that’s disappeared with inflation concerns related to oil prices. What remains to be seen is what is going to happen. I think that the key to continuing our momentum in terms of growth, and in terms of making sure we are the brand to be at, is focusing on service for our agents.
I like the word “customer-obsessed” because that really describes our mindset at Coldwell Banker Realty. We are customer-obsessed. Our agent is the customer, and we are obsessed with how to level up our service every single day. Ultimately, our goal is to provide unparalleled service to our agents so that they in turn provide unparalleled service to their clients. Most people buy or sell a home between two to three times in their lives, and we want our agents to participate in every single one of those transactions because they’re seen as a true trusted advisor to their clients. That trusted advisor status is where we want each and every one of our agents to get to.
DM: In honor of Women’s History Month, how do you feel being a woman has shaped your career as a real estate leader?
KL: I think real estate is an extraordinary career for women, and for mothers, because of the flexibility. Opening doors for women to have meaningful growth careers while providing flexibility is an incredibly important thing. When I started in this industry, I was a single mom. I was raising my young daughter and was inspired every single day by stories of other mothers, single mothers, non-parent mothers, who had built phenomenal careers in this industry. Seeing those role models was part of what spurred me forward, and I hope to be a role model for others in this industry to show them what’s possible because, unfortunately, while the vast majority of real estate agents are women, leadership in real estate is still disproportionately male. I really hope to set an example of what’s possible in terms of more female leadership in real estate.
Check out RISMedia’s 2026 Real Estate Newsmakers here.
RISMedia’s 2026 Newsmakers is sponsored by:
