Wood Realty Brokerage., She has became a Broker, Certified Staging Advocate, and Certified Color Expert. With her warm, personable manner and dedication to her work, Melissa has garnered a long list of satisfied clients ever since she entered the real estate field. In fact, she likes to consider many of them her friends.
“Selling real estate is all about making peoples’ lives better,” she explai
ns. “With real estate, you’re often helping clients deal with very delicate situations like unloading homes and estate sales. I get a big feeling of accomplishment knowing I’ve helped smooth that transition for people and helped them start a new life.”
A career in real estate wasn’t originally in the cards for Melissa. Born and raised in the Hamilton area, she had plans to get into the hospitality industry and graduated from Niagara College with a diploma in hotel and restaurant management. Afterwards, she honed her skills by attaining a bachelor’s degree in business administration at the Southern New Hampshire University. Melissa would go on to land a position as sales manager at the Hyatt Grand Champions Resort, Villas and Spa in Indian Wells, California, where she was responsible for handling conferences with thousands of people and overseeing special events from start to finish. After taking on various management positions in the Hyatt chain in California and Toronto, however, Melissa felt it was time to get back to her roots and returned to the Hamilton area. She was working as a sales representative for a local photography firm when a friend introduced Melissa to the Sutton Group. After meeting with the managers at Sutton and looking over their business plan, Melissa felt very comfortable with their operation and eventually joined the firm in October 2010. Melissa says it was an opportunity she just couldn’t pass up.
“I’ve always wanted to run my own business,” she explains, “and with the Sutton Group I have the opportunity to market and brand myself exactly how I want. I took a lot of customer training while I was at Hyatt, and I wanted to use those lessons to help my clients improve their life and situation.”