Cornerstone Association of Realtors elects Drew Hemsley as chair-elect and selects Bill Duce as CEO

This week, the Cornerstone Association of Realtors (Cornerstone) Amalgamation Task Force (ATF) announced the election of Drew Hemsley as chair-elect and the selection of Bill Duce as the chief executive officer.

Launching on July 1, Cornerstone will unite about 9,000 realtors from the Hamilton-Burlington, Mississauga, Simcoe and Waterloo Region real estate associations. The organization will be Ontario’s second-largest and Canada’s fourth-largest real estate board.

Hemsley will serve alongside Julie Sergi, the inaugural chair of Cornerstone for its 2024/2025 board of directors.

Drew Hemsley

Hemsley has served as a director on the Simcoe and District Real Estate Board (SDREB) since 2022 and is currently its president.

“There will be significant developments in organized real estate within the next decade,” says Hemsley. “I firmly believe that Cornerstone is exceptionally positioned to lead these changes, and I look forward to supporting our board chair, Julie Sergi, and our recently hired CEO as we navigate these exciting changes together with our board of directors for the benefit of our members.”

Bill Duce

Bill Duce is currently CEO of the Waterloo Region Association of Realtors (WRAR). He participated in creating the Ontario Regional Technology & Information Systems (ORTIS) regional initiative, and in 2018, he was one of the project leads for the Information Technology Systems of Ontario (ITSO) regional initiative, combining 17 boards that made up ORTIS and the Ontario Collective groups into one singular regional MLS system.

As CEO of the Kitchener-Waterloo Association of Realtors, Duce led the association through an amalgamation with the Cambridge Association of Realtors, forming WRAR in 2022.

“I am a builder at heart, and I look forward to aligning four exceptional associations to create something greater than the sum of its parts,” says Duce. “Organized real estate is overdue for a reset, and Cornerstone has the potential to be on the vanguard of this change while keeping our realtor members central to all we do.”

Photo: realtorstogether.ca