A seven-year career in the national sales and marketing office of NBC in Chicago, where she worked with a team of powerful men and women, taught Edyta Schell how to be professional, remain organized and communicate properly with peers and clients — skills that helped shape her into the expert she is today.

Schell, a Realtor with d’aprile properties, left NBC to become a stay-at-home mom. When her kids started school, she sought a career with flexible hours. Inspired by her aunt, now a semiretired agent who ran her own brokerage, she chose real estate; nine years later, she’s still happy she did.

Schell nearly doubled her sales from 2018 to 2019 and made the Chicago Association of Realtors’ top producer lists for at least $10 million in sales and at least 25 units sold. Ninety percent of her business comes from referrals and the rest from her marketing efforts.

“I honestly love helping people,” says Schell. “I love walking them through the process.” A list person, she has one for every task she performs throughout the day. “It keeps me super on top of my client work and, of course, motivated,” she says. To keep track of what’s going on in the market, she runs weekly comparative market analysis reports on all her listings and shares the news with clients. “Be the source of information at all times,” she says. “Stay in touch!”

Assisting mostly buyers and sellers on the North and Northwest sides of Chicago, Schell is also extremely familiar with all of the downtown areas and the northwestern suburbs. She immigrated to the U.S. from Poland at the age of 5, and her family lived in Chicago’s Belmont Cragin neighborhood before settling down in Prospect Heights.

She returned to the city for college and is now raising a family in Jefferson Park. Married for almost 15 years to a lender, Schell still finds the financial independence that a career in real estate affords her “amazing.”