Connie Yoshimura.

• Date: 01 November 2022

Improbably, Connie Yoshimura parlayed an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop into a career finding homes for Alaskans. The owner of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Alaska Realty learned to close a deal before she ever sold a house, beginning as a waitress. "I would try to figure out what was good in the kitchen that night," Yoshimura recalls, "and then I would try to figure out what the customers might enjoy. If I could put those two together, then I got a larger gratuity."

As the daughter of a Japanese-American father, she grew up with her Caucasian mother and stepfather, always feeling out...