PRIVATE COMPANIES
For ex-teacher, not going by the books led to successful real estate career

by Paula C. Squires
Virginia Business
August 2005

As a high school student in the 1970s, Brenda Shipplett figured she had three career choices: teacher, nurse or secretary. After graduation from Longwood College, she taught high school history and government for 15 years, winning Teacher of the Year at Woodridge High School in Prince William County. Along the way, she earned a master’s degree in American history from Dartmouth College. Her teaching career seemed set.

Seven years into teaching, though, Shipplett got a real estate license. That move would prove to be crucial, changing her career direction. Today Shipplett, 55, occupies the No. 2 slot at Long & Foster Cos., the largest privately owned real estate company in the U.S.

As president and COO of the Fairfax-based firm, she ranks just behind company founder and CEO P. Wesley Foster Jr. Long & Foster’s sales have tracked the rapid growth of Northern Virginia, reaching a record $39 billion last year. Throw in revenue from its mortgage, title, and insurance agencies and total revenues topped $56 billion.

That empire exceeds anything Shipplett imaged growing up in Newport News near the city’s bus station. Her parents owned the Greyhound station and Shipplett helped out, even doing the singing telegrams ordered via Western Union. “If someone had a birthday, we did them by phone or in person,” she recalls. Today, the lyric soprano takes voice from a New York coach and occasionally performs at recitals that raise money for charity. But the booming real estate business consumes most of her time. Aside from a husband and three cats, Shipplett says her life is her job. “It’s a 7-day-a-week, 24-hour-a day job.”

After starting out as a part-time sales agent, Shipplett abandoned her teaching career in 1986 and joined Long & Foster to manage its Mount Vernon area office. Consistently a million-dollar producer, she got a big promotion in 1990 to general manager of the Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina region. In this job, Shipplett oversaw office managers and played a key role in mergers and acquisitions, which helped fuel Long and Foster’s aggressive growth.

Her teaching background, she says, proved to be a plus. “I learned early on as a teacher that my attitude was directly reflected by the students back at me. The way you treat people, they treat you right back.”

Last year, Foster picked her to succeed him as president. Now 71, he founded Long & Foster 36 years ago with a single sales office in Fairfax. He remains chairman of the company, which now has a 2,100-member support staff and 14,000 sales agents in more than 200 offices in seven mid-Atlantic states. “I don’t care whether people who lead the company are male or female,” says Foster. What is paramount is that people “get out there and work.” Shipplett stood out, he says, because, “in any position she has been in, she has excelled.”

While Shipplett thrives on the challenge of running a real estate company during one of the hottest housing markets in U.S. history, there are times when she feels the pressure. She puts in long days — usually 9 in the morning until 8 at night. “Wes has built an amazing company,” she says. And it’s her responsibility to position the company for future growth. “It’s a big responsibility that I feel keenly.”