Featured Leader: Ellie Callander

Beginning her professional career as a dental hygienist, Ellie Calander got her first taste of the real estate business with the purchase of small rental property that she discovered with a search through the classifieds. In her own words, she started “down and dirty”, often dealing with unruly tenants, missed rent payments, and the occasional eviction. With the challenges, however, came aspects of real estate she greatly enjoyed and she elected to pursue it. She got her real estate license and set off with little more than ambition and a desire to succeed.

By 1993, Ellie was founding her own real estate company, the Callander Commercial Group. Since that time, she has been individually ranked as the #1 commercial broker in Southwest Michigan. In 2006, Callander teamed with Prudential CRES, and now has offices in both Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids. With over 75% market share in the Kalamazoo area, Prudential CRES is recognized as the largest and most successful commercial industrial brokerage firm throughout Southwest Michigan.

Ellie is the only Michigan Broker to have achieved the status of Senior Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM) National Instructor. She also served on the Governance Council for the National CCIM Institute, and held the position of Director for the Commercial Board of Realtors in the State of Michigan. Callander recently completed her position as Chairman of the Kalamazoo Regional Chamber of Commerce.

“It really comes down to attitude,” she recently said at a Secrets of a CEO meeting hosted by the Kalamazoo Area Young Professionals, where she was the featured speaker. “I took the attitude of I can do it. There’s a better way to do it,” she said, recounting her history of successes. Her strategy is, and has always been, to never say no, to think big, but to tackle challenges one step at time.

She also happens to be a big fan of Kalamazoo. Raised in Detroit, she was instantly taken with Kalamazoo. “There’s a sense of anonymity in the big cities that can be nice sometimes,” she told the Young Professionals, “but Kalamazoo has a sense of community and that’s what I grew to love.”