by G. Sax, Head of Communications, RESO
This week’s interview is with Liz Gunski, Senior Director, Industry Relations, at Realtors Property Resource® (RPR). We talked about career arcs, New England and television characters. Enjoy!
Q1: Your career has taken you from a New England MLS to a proptech company – Homesnap – which merged into Homes.com to consultancy at T3 Sixty to RPR, one of the crown jewels of the National Association of REALTORS®. What would you say your key superpower is that makes you so resilient across the real estate landscape?
Liz: I’ve always believed that there’s always a better way to do something. You build a process, revisit it later and find ways to make it stronger. I’m not sure I’d call that resiliency – it’s more about curiosity, adaptability and staying grounded in relationships. The real estate industry is built on connections, and maintaining those has always been key for me.
My background at the MLS really shaped who I am. It’s where I learned the business and where I realized how much I enjoyed collaborating with associations and MLS partners. I still remember hearing the term “RETS” for the first time. Soon after, I became the point person for working with third-party vendors like Black Knight and CoreLogic [now ICE and Cotality]. Those experiences helped me understand not just the data, but the people and products behind it.
When the Homesnap opportunity came along, it was a leap but one that allowed me to grow beyond the MLS world and deepen my understanding of the broader real estate ecosystem. Each move since then – from tech to consultancy to RPR – has been about expanding my perspective while staying true to what I value most: relationships, learning and helping our industry work smarter.
Q2: You are pretty well rooted in New England. Since 2000, New England’s major professional sports teams have won a combined 13 championships:
- New England Patriots (6 Super Bowls)
- Boston Red Sox (4 World Series titles)
- Boston Celtics (2 NBA championships)
- Boston Bruins (1 Stanley Cup)
In addition, in that time, 9 NCAA hockey titles have gone to New England:
- Boston College (4)
- Boston U. (1)
- UMass (1)
- Yale (1)
- Providence (1)
- Quinnipiac (1)
And in college basketball, UConn earned 5 men’s titles and 11 women’s titles over the same span.
Can that be enough now?
Liz: No. Absolutely not. My favorite thing about when we win championships is when somebody holds up their 9-month old baby, and they have on a onesie that says “This is My 3rd Championship!”
I like that you noted all the hockey wins. I raised a hockey player, and I’m married to a hockey player. We are big fans of the annual Beanpot ice hockey tournament between Boston University, Boston College, Harvard and Northeastern.
And now we have the Frozen Fenway tournament that features local college teams and was last played when the 2023 NHL Winter Classic between the Boston Bruins and Pittsburgh Penguins was held at Fenway.
It’s not even the winning that makes it all so great. It’s about the people who are there on those winning teams. It’s the personalities like Julian Edelman, Tom Brady and others that were on those winning Patriots teams. Hockey is the sport that I prefer, and now Charlie Coyle is with Columbus and Brad Marchand won a Stanley Cup with the Florida Panthers. When those big personalities go, that makes the draw sort of less.
But we are a sports family. It was normal for my 6-year-old boy to come down the stairs and ask, “Did the Red Sox win?” All the teams are super fun, but it’s not like I’m checking the scores every day at this juncture.
RESO (G. Sax): So spoiled. My teams have experienced no championships since 1991. I’m skipping the box scores for different reasons.
Q3: There is a picture of you online in front of Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment from “Sex in the City,” so it has to be asked – are you a Carrie, Amanda, Charlotte or Samantha and why?
Liz: Oh, gosh. I’m probably a little bit of everyone. You take different qualities from each of them. There are things about Samantha that are great. She doesn’t care what anyone says about her. We bought this house at the lake in October. We put it in just my name. A couple of days before closing, I was asked if it was just me, and that felt like a Samantha moment.
Carrie’s fashion sense is to die for. She has a good favorite drink [the Cosmopolitan] and I like that she is a thinker. Sometimes an overthinker. There’s a lot to like about her.
Charlotte is so happy and family-oriented, and I feel that in my life all the time.
Miranda actually is a really good person with a big heart – we saw her being there for Steve through cancer, she’s a good mom, she helped with Steve’s mother – all loving things. But she comes off super harsh on the surface. I relate to that, because it’s difficult to be a woman in a man’s world. You have to have a hard exterior, otherwise you are going to get beaten up. That’s just how it is. Amanda’s hard exterior comes from her protecting herself.
If you were to ask me which Spice Girl I am, I couldn’t tell you.
Three Questions is a lighthearted interview series that features real estate industry professionals, their businesses and how they interact with real estate standards.
