The REALTORS Care® moniker helps highlight the charitable efforts of REALTORS® across Canada. Since 2007, the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) has celebrated the remarkable contributions REALTORS® all across the country have made to a variety of causes close to their hearts..

On this episode of REAL TIME, we’re joined by Cindi Loforti Lepp and Ken Hammer, two REALTORS® nominated for the Canadian REALTORS Care® Award 2024 for their own incredible community impact. This is a feel-good conversation - listen in and be prepared to be inspired!

Transcript

Erin Davis: REALTORS Care®. You care about your clients, your business, and most importantly, your community. Since 2007, the Canadian Real Estate Association has been growing the national REALTORS Care® program to celebrate charitable achievements, advocacy, fundraising, and inspirational stories of REALTORS® using their collective impact to improve the world around them. I'm Erin Davis and welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for REALTORS® brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association.

Erin: Today, we are joined by two nominees for the 2024 Canadian REALTORS Care® Award who have been beacons of hope in their communities, Ken Hammer and Cindi Loforti Lepp. They're here with us to share their inspiring journeys. Welcome to both of you and we're going to let you both tell us more about yourselves. We're going to start with you, Ken.

Ken Hammer: Well, thanks Erin and hi, Cindi. First of all-

Cindi Loforti Lepp: Hi, good to see you again, Ken.

Ken: -it's great to be a part of this. I think it's really important. I'll give you a brief background. I've been an academic for 33 years. I've also been a practitioner or an entrepreneur for the same amount of time, so I've always practiced as well as teaching. Became a REALTOR® in about eight and a half years ago. Proud to be a REALTOR® with the Scott Parker team and with RE/MAX in Nanaimo. Happy to be a part of this conversation.

Erin: We're glad to have you here, Ken. Tell us, what did you teach? Because if it's grammar, we're going to be really, really careful.

Ken: Not grammar. That was probably one of my weaker areas, although it did improve. My field of expertise was called Recreation Administration and Tourism Management. Within that, a lot of my areas of interest were in the entrepreneurial realm. I taught an entrepreneurship course. I taught marketing. I taught leadership. It had a business kind of sense to it. It really fit with my entrepreneurial needs as well as my teaching needs.

Erin: Wonderful. Okay, Cindi, what about you?

Cindi: I've been a REALTOR® for a little over two and a half years. I've come late to the game compared to somebody like Ken. I've been involved with various not-for-profit organizations in our community for decades and very much enjoy it. I have been involved with Habitat for Humanity, the YWCA, Pathstone Children's Mental Health, and Youth Without Secure Housing. I've had a lot of experience with being on boards and just dealing with those organizations and have enjoyed it immensely.

Erin: Good. What did it mean to you to be nominated for the 2024 REALTORS Care® Award? We'll start with you, Cindi.

Cindi: Well, first and foremost, I was very surprised. I just say, shout out to CREA for even coming up with this concept. I think it's so incredibly important that we highlight REALTORS® that are giving back to their community. I think it's one occupation where you see that constantly, where REALTORS®, they have big hearts and are continually giving back to their community, being involved in various organizations and charities. I was very honored, really was, like I said, very surprised, but felt very privileged to be included in the Care Award.

Erin: How'd you find out about it?

Cindi: I got a phone call, and I think it was Allison. Allison called me and said, "This is what's going on. You've been nominated and you've become one of the finalists." It was absolutely thrilling. We had an amazing conversation. It was YWCA who actually nominated me and put a lot of time and effort into writing the review on what I had done in the community. Very thankful to them. Then excited to be involved in the filming and highlighting the charities and the organizations I've been involved with over the years. It was a wonderful experience.

Erin: Oh, that's great. Good to hear. How about you, Ken? What did it mean for you to be nominated for the REALTORS Care® Award for 2024?

Ken: Again, like Cindi, it's pretty exciting and honorable. I give my team a lot of credit for that, though. It started with our local brokerage nomination for-- we have in our VIREB, Vancouver Island Real Estate Board, REALTORS Care® Award. I was shocked to get a message from my managing broker that they had nominated me. They didn't tell me, so quite a surprise, which was neat.

Then the CREA Care Award, I hadn't known that they'd put my name forward to that as well. A bit of a surprise, but just like Cindi, I think it's an honor for not only my team in brokerage, but also the organizations we work with. To me, I saw that as a great opportunity. Now I can share some of the great work the community organizations are doing with a broader audience. That was the most exciting part for me.

Erin: How did you first get involved with the causes that you support today? You've both mentioned so many of them already. Why were they so important? We'll start with you, Cindi.

Cindi: I come from a family where they've always given back in the community. I think I just followed their lead and went about finding organizations that would be the best fit for myself and started with Youth Without Secure Housing, that's basically homeless youth, and worked with them. That snowballed into so many other organizations because once you get involved in that venue, you start to meet so many people, have great stories, and you hear about other causes. You're invited. You're invited to serve on boards. You're invited to help-out with various projects.

I got involved with a regional group that was hand-pointed, that was for homeless youth and ended up serving alongside of wonderful people like Elizabeth Zimmerman, who is the executive director of the YWCA locally, and ended up serving on the board after getting to know her, and then got involved with the YW. I'm sure Ken would agree with me. When you get involved in those venues in our community, it just opens-up the door to you for so many other experiences that are so rewarding, and you get to know so many fabulous people.

Ken: I grew up in it. I had parents who were involved in the community since I can remember. My dad was a Lion for all his life, honored by being a Lion. That's a service organization. My mother, the same thing. I come from a small community, so they were extremely involved. I didn't know how it unfolded for me, but as the years went by through my early years as an academic, of course, I was involved in professional organizations and giving back to them and being engaged in them.

Again, throughout my life and career, as I started a new business, I went to one of the few people I know in my community I'm in now, Nanaimo, British Columbia. He was my REALTOR®, who happened to be my sister-in-law's cousin. I asked him, I said, "Hey, Dave, I'm having some challenges getting connected in my community. I've got this new business and leadership and management development. What do you recommend? There's so many organizations out there. It could have been BNI. It could have been the Executive Association, can be Toastmasters."

He said, "Ken, if I was you, I'd get involved in Rotary." He said, "Rotary is where the movers and shakers are in the community, and that's where you're going to meet people and doors will open for you." Sure enough, it was true. I wear this little lapel pin here, which is a Rotarian pin. As I started wearing that pin and meeting some of the executives in the community, it gave me instant credibility. They just said, "Oh, Ken, you're a Rotarian. That's great. You're in your community. Got to like that."

I started with Rotary. As Cindi said, once you start with one organization, it just snowballs. That snowball effect through Rotary led me to many, many other organizations that we work with and serve in many different ways. Sometimes it's just taking that first step, getting involved in a little way, and opportunities will just open-up. It's unbelievable.

Cindi: I'm going to jump on that one because I've just been asked to join our local Rotary. Ken and I did it the other way around because I've been involved with many different organizations. Now, that has been a springboard to be involved now with Rotary. Ken, you're saying that you actually got involved with Rotary, which became the springboard to getting involved with so many other organizations.

Ken: Congratulations, Cindi. That's great news. Rotary will provide many more opportunities to serve, and I think that's partly what it's about for us, is just to serve our communities. This year it's actually an interesting theme that Rotary has. Every year they have a different theme. This year the theme of Rotary is called The Magic of Rotary.