March 2025 Featured Interview
The Power of Networking:
Ann Cutbill Lenane on Connecting Women In New York City and Beyond
Ann Cutbill Lenane
Photo Courtesy: Ann Cutbill Lenane
Photo Courtesy: Ann Cutbill Lenane
About Ann:
Ann Cutbill Lenane is rated as Elliman’s #1 Manhattan Broker for both gross commission income and transactions. She was also voted REBNY’s Broker of The Year (2018) and has transacted billions of dollars of sales in her 41-year career. In 2019, she founded Wise and Wonderful Women to help inspire and inform women over 45 through its Facebook page and free, monthly dinners.
She is regularly quoted in notable publications, such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and she has been featured on national and international television programs, such as Good Morning America and The Today Show.
Along with her daughters, she is involved in helping several charitable organizations, including the literacy summer camp they founded in the Bahamas over ten years ago. With the generous help of JetBlue, special education teachers from the U.S. fly down to work alongside Ann and her girls to teach and counsel over 75 elementary school children with learning issues. They also have collected hundreds of gently used laptops from the real estate community and delivered them to families who are most in need.
She is regularly quoted in notable publications, such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and she has been featured on national and international television programs, such as Good Morning America and The Today Show.
Along with her daughters, she is involved in helping several charitable organizations, including the literacy summer camp they founded in the Bahamas over ten years ago. With the generous help of JetBlue, special education teachers from the U.S. fly down to work alongside Ann and her girls to teach and counsel over 75 elementary school children with learning issues. They also have collected hundreds of gently used laptops from the real estate community and delivered them to families who are most in need.
Tribe, squad, posse, sisterhood, sorority, moms’ group, sewing circle, coffee klatch, theater club, religious fellowship, lunch bunch. Whatever you call it, a women’s group is a wonderful thing to be part of; the benefits are manifold.
Your sisters can help boost your confidence and general well-being; connect you to job openings; answer questions and provide referrals for personal and professional needs; act as a sounding board; be a source of emotional support; and, just as (or more) important, provide fun.
The New York City-based group Ann Cutbill Lenane founded, runs and funds, Wise and Wonderful Women, grew out of a real estate advertising campaign. (If you’re ever in a New York City taxi, you might catch some of her recent ads.) That one idea has since mushroomed into a consortium of about 2500 women. Ann hosts monthly dinners in the Hudson Yards area of Manhattan that also serve up topical speakers and the chance to make new friends.
Her real estate advertising tagline is “Annie gets it done,” and she does, on multiple levels.
Your sisters can help boost your confidence and general well-being; connect you to job openings; answer questions and provide referrals for personal and professional needs; act as a sounding board; be a source of emotional support; and, just as (or more) important, provide fun.
The New York City-based group Ann Cutbill Lenane founded, runs and funds, Wise and Wonderful Women, grew out of a real estate advertising campaign. (If you’re ever in a New York City taxi, you might catch some of her recent ads.) That one idea has since mushroomed into a consortium of about 2500 women. Ann hosts monthly dinners in the Hudson Yards area of Manhattan that also serve up topical speakers and the chance to make new friends.
Her real estate advertising tagline is “Annie gets it done,” and she does, on multiple levels.
Associate Editor, Carol Lippert Gray, spoke with Ann by phone on a recent morning, as she was pedaling her exercise bike.
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Tell us how Wise and Wonderful Women started.
It all started in 2019. I am [real estate company] Douglas Elliman’s number one Manhattan broker. I’ve sold billions of dollars of real estate. I was looking for creative ways to run ads. I started running them in movie theaters. We were filming the first ad. I was in a taxi and said, as the light was starting to change, ‘What I should really run is a taxi ad for a single divorced dad.’ I thought it would be tongue-in-cheek to run personal ads about finding love in New York City. An ad that said, ‘If you love your mother but don’t live with her and can appreciate a fit and fab woman of 56, give me a call.’ The ad salesperson I was working with was a kid who said, ‘We can’t put this up. It’s a personal ad.’ I knew I needed to do it quickly, so I reached out to a guy at a different taxi ad company, explaining how it could go viral and would speak to people, both men and women. It went viral: 15 million people saw it. It was featured on the teleprompter in Times Square, on Good Morning America, in the New York Post, and internationally. Men and women started reaching out to me from all over the country. The coolest thing to come out of this is that women were writing to me, saying I was so brave. I was a single mom, divorced with two kids. Why was it so brave? Was it because I said my age? |
Video Courtesy: Ann Cutbill Lenane
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I had just bought an apartment in Hudson Yards and the building has a beautiful entertaining space on the fifty-first floor. I started an email page and began inviting women to free dinners. We moved to Zoom during the pandemic. I focused on women 50 and older, brought in informed speakers, and it grew organically, with women and then their daughters wanting to come.
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"It’s scary to go into a roomful of people you don’t know. We give everyone a place card with their bio on it and a name tag. We ask who lives in XYZ neighborhood because we want people to share a taxi home and ask each other out." ~ Ann Cutbill Lenane |
How does Wise and Wonderful Women work?
Before each dinner, we ask anyone who signed up to send in a personal and business biography, but to keep it light, along with the neighborhood they live in and their email address. Twenty-five percent of the people at each dinner are new. We film all the speakers and have a video library of all the speakers as a resource. It’s scary to go into a roomful of people you don’t know. We give everyone a place card with their bio on it and a name tag. We ask who lives in XYZ neighborhood because we want people to share a taxi home and ask each other out. |
How has it grown?
It’s built momentum to 2500 names on our mailing list and 1200 on our Facebook page. We host about 28 people per dinner and just held our first multi-day retreat. I’m the ultimate connector. I’m spending the dollars for the food.
It’s built momentum to 2500 names on our mailing list and 1200 on our Facebook page. We host about 28 people per dinner and just held our first multi-day retreat. I’m the ultimate connector. I’m spending the dollars for the food.
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Recently 25 of us chopped and diced food for God’s Love We Deliver [a New York-based organization that cooks and home-delivers nutritious, medically tailored meals for people too sick to shop or cook for themselves]. The people had a wonderful time.
It’s not easy. But I’m able to afford it and have this beautiful space. I believe people need this physical connection and community. There are proven health benefits. Do we not want to invest in that? It’s something that feeds my soul, and I love it. We’re forming good friendships that alter people’s lives. Can our readers replicate something like this where they live? Start with going to groups yourself and meeting people there. Ask how they started their group. You have to monetize a group. It would be a minimal cost relative to what it would be in New York City. When you’re first starting, how do you get a sponsor? How do you find a space? You could meet in churches or community rooms. You have to find a bunch of people who see the value and commit to investing in themselves. |
A Full House at a Recent Wise and Wonderful Women Event
Photo Courtesy: Ann Cutbill Lenane |
Is there a downside?
I can’t tell you how many people cancel at the last minute or just don’t show up. Ten percent don’t come. We drop them from the mailing list.
Where do you find sanctuary?
I meditate every morning. I do transcendental meditation. I hang with my friends, both male and female. They boost me up, pick me up, dust me off, and make me laugh.
You have to get off Instagram, where everyone’s life is perfect. The more real we are, the better. Every single person has issues in some way. But we’re supporting each other and sharing resources. What a gift it is to be honest and to help each other.
I can’t tell you how many people cancel at the last minute or just don’t show up. Ten percent don’t come. We drop them from the mailing list.
Where do you find sanctuary?
I meditate every morning. I do transcendental meditation. I hang with my friends, both male and female. They boost me up, pick me up, dust me off, and make me laugh.
You have to get off Instagram, where everyone’s life is perfect. The more real we are, the better. Every single person has issues in some way. But we’re supporting each other and sharing resources. What a gift it is to be honest and to help each other.
Ask to Join Wise and Wonderful Women on:
FACEBOOK
