When Jennifer Duncan first moved to Chicago in 2000, she was young and intoxicated by everything the city had to offer. “I would ride the trains and buses, get off and find my way back home,” remembers Duncan, a real estate agent with @properties. For the past four years, she has shared her love of the city with buyers and sellers in the West Loop, South Loop and East Garfield Park neighborhoods. “I got into real estate after becoming a mom and realizing that I had the power to control our future in a far more meaningful way than what I was able to do as a makeup artist,” she says.

At the first meeting, she spends time with clients to learn their needs and expectations. “I need for my clients to understand that I treat their individual experiences as if they are our individual experiences,” she explains. “I know some brokers say they don’t need to make friends, and while I don’t need to, it’s definitely a positive.” Fun, honest, straightforward and reliable, Duncan is part of a team and generates a lot of referral business.

Outside of real estate, she regularly volunteers with three organizations: Youth Job Center of Evanston, which helps at-risk youth learn how to build resumes and interview, as well as present themselves to the working world; One Heart One Soul, a provider of resources and opportunities for youth experiencing different phases of homelessness; and Silver Spoon Desserts, an organization that employs single moms and teaches them how to become entrepreneurs who dream big.

“It has been my life’s dream to build a business so bountiful that it afforded me an opportunity to use my platform to help other families realize the steps to building generational wealth,” Duncan says. “I want to use my business to help those families who do not qualify for government subsidies find a way to grow.”