Who

Dottie Herman is the CEO of Prudential Douglas Elliman, the largest real estate brokerage in the New York metro area with 3,000-plus employees and $12 billion in annual sales.

Backstory

Dorothy D'Ambrosio was raised in a middle-class Long Island home, attended Adelphi, and got her start as broker at Merrill Lynch's Long Island office, back when the brokerage giant was still involved in real estate. Merrill sold the division to Prudential in 1987; two years later, when Prudential contemplated doing the same, Herman managed to successfully persuade the company to loan her $9 million to buy it herself, vowing to expand the fledgling company to Manhattan and beyond. She got her wish in 2003 when she teamed up with tobacco/hot dog entrepreneur Howard Lorber to acquire the brokerage Douglas Elliman, the venerable firm founded in 1911. Herman and Lorber paid $73 million to buy the firm from Andrew Farkas's Insignia. She's since become one of the most prominent—and powerful—players in New York realty.

Of note

Since taking over, Herman has expanded dramatically, recruiting several hundred new brokers to the firm and, notwithstanding the fact PDE operates under the slogan "From Manhattan to Montauk," expanding far beyond New York, too. The company now has outposts in Florida, London, Tokyo, Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos, and the Bahamas. And she's also expanded Elliman's previously anemic retail division, hiring away retail real estate guru Faith Hope Consolo from Garrick-Aug in 2005. Herman's expansion plans haven't pleased everyone, of course: Some members of the old Elliman guard haven't been thrilled by the company's increasingly "mass" approach to real estate. But Herman has been charging forward and her reputation as a brash brokerage chief bent on domination has, perhaps not surprisingly, earned her the title of the "new Barbara Corcoran."

On the job

Elliman oversees a stable of top brokers at the company including Dolly Lenz, Ilan Bracha, Leonard Steinberg, Jan Hashey, and Helene Luchnick. (One broker she no longer works with: Linda Stein, who was murdered in October 2007.) She's also trained a handful of people who have split from the brokerage house and are making their names of their own such as Michael Shvo and Shaun Osher.

In person

Herman may have conquered the real estate market in Manhattan, but she hasn't mastered the accent—she still sounds pure Long Island. Colleagues also say that the perennially tanned brokerage chief seems to have spent some time in the plastic surgeon's chair as of late.

Personal

Herman's second husband, Jay, is an attorney. She has a grown daughter from her first marriage, Christine, who is a teacher. Herman lives at an apartment in the Essex House, and maintains a pair of residences on Long Island.

True story

There's a website dedicated to those who hate Herman. Dottieherman.net bills itself as a hub for people "angered by the dishonest way Dottie Herman has treated them."

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