Article November 25, 1996 Issue

A Realtor ponders the true sense of home and business

by Kim Shippey

Jean Burgdorff, chairman of Burgdorff Realtors, studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and at Columbia University, New York. For several years she served on the piano faculty at Rutgers University, New Jersey. After starting a family, she and her husband Douglas joined in founding a real estate business.

When her husband passed on a few years later, she had to learn the lessons of leadership fast. She did well. Both her sons now work in the company—one of them, Peter, as president, and Charles, in the computer department. The company has thirty-two offices in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and more than six hundred sales people, with another two hundred employees providing administrative support. In 1994, Real Trends magazine ranked the company thirty-second nationally in dollar volume. Last year, Governor Christine Todd Whitman appointed Mrs. Burgdorff a member of the New Jersey Real Estate Commission.

Mrs. Burgdorff balances her professional pursuits with active church participation, opportunities to travel, and what she calls grateful grand-parenting. We talked with her at her weekend retreat—an office away from the office that compromises only on change of pace.

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