Betty Doré

To celebrate 25 years of serving Canada’s real estate community, REM asked a small group of real estate leaders this question:

“Who had the biggest impact – good or bad – on Canadian real estate in the last 25 years?

This is not a popularity contest or a marketing exercise. We want to know who you think had the biggest impact on the industry in the last 25 years – even if it was, in your opinion, a negative impact. Your choices could include Realtors, company executives, association executive officers, regulators, service company executives….even politicians! Who has had the most impact during the last 25 years in making the industry what it is today?”

REM took those consensus picks and added our own and the results will be revealed on REM online every day until the end of June.  Take a look and see if you agree with these choices, and then let us know who we missed. Add your comments below or drop an email to [email protected].

Betty Doré

“Betty Doré has carved out a niche as the go-to executive officer for tough committee work within the executive officer ranks as well as on member-centric issues,” says Alan Tennant, CREB CEO. “Her greatest impact over the years has simply been in being the voice of reason, a tireless innovator and keeper of our institutional compass. Whenever we’ve veered off track, Betty has not only raised the flag but taken impactful steps to get us back on course.”

Doré, the long-time EO of the London St. Thomas Association of Realtors, was chair of the Association Executives Council of CREA and served as an advisor to CREA and the National Association of Realtors (NAR) to develop a designation for Canadian association staff.

She spearheaded Project Connect, which allows participating associations in Ontario to access each other’s MLS systems. She was the first and only association executive to serve as governor and then president of the Realtors Care Foundation in Ontario.

“During her tenure and under her leadership, the governance of the foundation was restructured and its scope greatly expanded, resulting in a growth in the Capital Fund from just under $2 million to over $3 million in just four years, and an increase in outgoing grants to shelter-related charities from $90,000 to almost half a million dollars,” says Melissa Hardy-Trevenna, director of communications at LSTAR.

“It is difficult to think of anyone who has, without fuss or fanfare, quietly gone about driving change in Canadian real estate over the past 25 years more than Betty Doré.”