Suzanne Powers is the Standard the List Is Measured Against

Suzanne Powers is not a real estate agent who happens to be very good. She is one of Milwaukee's great business owners of her time, a founder in the line of the men and women who built this city, and a woman whose name will be written into its history alongside the homes she sells.

To understand what it means when Suzanne accepts your home, you have to understand who she is

Milwaukee was not handed to anyone. It was built.

Frederick Pabst and Joseph Schlitz built breweries that carried the city's name around the world. William Harley and the Davidson brothers built motorcycles in a backyard shed. Lynde and Harry Bradley built an industrial empire. And the families who made those fortunes commissioned architects like Alexander Eschweiler to build the Tudor manors and lakefront estates that still define the North Shore and the Upper East Side.

For most of that history, the founders were men. The women of Milwaukee built too, but they built against the current. Lizzie Black Kander turned a settlement house cookbook into one of the best-selling American cookbooks of the twentieth century. Wisconsin became the first state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women the vote. Those were the first chapters.

Suzanne Powers is writing a later one.

In 2011, Suzanne Powers did what most professionals in her industry never do. She left the security of someone else's firm and founded her own. She did not buy a franchise. She did not inherit a name. She built Powers Realty Group, Inc. from the first yard sign, then bought and restored the building on Oakland Avenue that became its award winning Shorewood headquarters.

That choice placed her in rare company. Only about 12 percent of REALTORS® work primarily as broker-owners. Women make up roughly two thirds of the profession, yet the ownership chair has long been held more often by men. In one California Association of REALTORS® study, 16 percent of women members were broker-owners, compared with 27 percent of men.

The pattern holds far beyond real estate. Of the roughly 5.9 million employer businesses in the United States, only about 1.4 million, or 22.9 percent, are majority owned by women, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey. More than three of every four companies that employ people in this country are still owned by men.

In 2023, Milwaukee Magazine noted that Suzanne was the only woman owner among Milwaukee's top 20 brokerages.

Suzanne did not wait to be offered a seat at that table. She built the table.

Federal data from the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells a hard truth: about one in five new businesses closes in its first year, roughly half are gone by year five, and only about one in four are still standing at fifteen years.

Powers Realty Group, Inc. celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in 2026, and it is stronger today than ever:

• $2.6 billion in career sales across roughly 6,000 transactions
• Real Trends Verified
• The highest average sale price in the State of Wisconsin, at $869,234
• Sophisticated sales reaching above $20 million
• Wisconsin's leader in hobby farm and equestrian real estate
• A second office at 780 Fifth Avenue South in Naples, opened because her Wisconsin clients asked her to be their Florida broker

Suzanne's leadership has been recognized well beyond the closing table:

• Woman of Influence Award, Entrepreneur category, Milwaukee Business Journal, 2024
• Women of Distinction, Milwaukee Magazine, 2023 and 2024
• "Meet Wisconsin's #1 Boutique Broker," profiled as a leading woman in business by Entrepreneur magazine, March 2018
• Top 25 Milwaukee Real Estate Influencers, FeedSpot, 2025
• Cover feature, Milwaukee Real Producers, October 2019
• RealTrends 2026: #2 Large Team in Wisconsin and #217 nationally
• RealTrends Verified #1 in Milwaukee and Ozaukee County for luxury listings over $800K
• RealTrends Top One Half of One Percent of REALTORS® nationwide, year after year

Her Real Estate Insights have been published by The Wall Street Journal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Milwaukee Business Journal, BizTimes, Naples Illustrated, and The Naples Press.

She has trained more than 263 agents and staff, served on Wisconsin's Standards Committee for ethics since 2007, sits on ethics boards in Naples and Marco Island, and founded a charitable foundation that gives back to the communities her firm serves.

There is a difference between hiring a professional and retaining a founder.

She manages your sale as a project, with the discipline of a former Fortune 50 manager and the eye of a design consultant who transformed her own building. Photography that averages about $3,000. Staging that typically exceeds $5,000. Guidance on finishes and materials from the woman known as the Queen of Staging and Remodeling. Discretion and ease with executive and C suite families, because she is one of them: a CEO who signs the checks behind every strategy she recommends.

This is why Suzanne does not audition. A founder is not one option on a list. She is the standard the list is measured against.

The homes Eschweiler designed were built for the families who shaped Milwaukee a century ago. Today, those homes and the ones that will become tomorrow's landmarks are entrusted to a woman who is shaping Milwaukee now.

One day, when the story of Milwaukee's great women in business is told, Suzanne Powers will be in it. Not because she joined the story. Because she built her chapter of it, one home and one family at a time.

Suzanne Powers founded Powers Realty Group, Inc. in 2011 and serves as its CEO, Founder, and Broker Owner, with offices in Shorewood, Wisconsin and Naples, Florida.

Suzanne has been honored by the Milwaukee Business Journal with its 2024 Woman of Influence Award in the Entrepreneur category, named a Milwaukee Magazine Woman of Distinction in 2023 and 2024, profiled by Entrepreneur magazine, is RealTrends Verified #1 in Milwaukee and Ozaukee County for luxury listings over $800K, holds the highest average sale price in Wisconsin, and holds the trademarked designation Wisconsin's #1 Boutique Broker™.

Rare. Only about 12 percent of REALTORS® work primarily as broker owners, and although women are roughly two thirds of the profession, men hold a larger share of ownership roles.

With a private consultation. Call the Shorewood office at 414-963-0000 or reach the Naples office through powersrealtyfl.com.