Ashoo Sharma – GC Powerlist
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Atlanta 2023

Industrials and real estate

Ashoo Sharma

General counsel and vice-president | Harry Norman, REALTORS®

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Atlanta 2023

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Ashoo Sharma

General counsel and vice-president | Harry Norman, REALTORS®

Ashoo’s personal background shaped her professional success. Ashoo’s parents immigrated with very little. Because of how little they had, Ashoo appreciates all she has and always looks to serve others. Her life has been non-traditional and challenging, from working as a paralegal during undergraduate to help support her family to completing law school with a baby at home. Regardless of struggles, she has excelled professionally.

At The Weissman firm, she defended real estate brokerages and enjoyed the “real world” issues that home ownership disputes involve. Even as a litigator, she focused on improving client’s practices to avoid future lawsuits versus litigating the client’s case to the last dime. Putting the best interest of her client first gained her high respect and seeing the case through trial, when necessary, got her nicknamed the “unleased Asian Tiger” for her zealous representation. She was named a 2006 and 2011 “Georgia Rising Star” based on recognition and nominations from her peers.

When the firm’s client, Harry Norman, REALTORS®, one of Atlanta’s most successful real estate brokerages came knocking to add their first in-house lawyer, Ashoo landed her dream job. Harry Norman, REALTOR® is a Berkshire Hathaway company so Ashoo’s mission is to have it live up to the highest standards of ethics, integrity, and compliance. Ashoo reports directly to the CEO and has oversight over all legal matters. She obtained remarkable outcomes in a short time by reducing claims and adding to company profit by collecting unpaid commission dollars. For this, she got recognised for her early achievements with the legal community’s GC Impact Award in 2017. She significantly reduced outside legal bills, prevented lawsuits through agent training, pre-suit resolution, and implemented risk management policies that have protected company dollars and reputation. She reports on those successes in a detailed way to senior leadership. She is invited to business strategy meetings because she is solutions oriented. One example of her success is combating cyber fraud, which is prevalent in the real estate market with hackers scamming homebuyers out of closing funds by wire fraud. She led the effort in producing her company’s consumer wire fraud warning forms which ultimately got adopted by competitive brokerages and the state’s Realtors Association to be used across Georgia. Her innovation and deliberation contributed to making the real estate industry safer.

During the pandemic years, while managing real estate safety challenges, she partnered with her CEO to improve the company’s diversity and culture goals when social injustices revealed there is more work to be done. Ashoo put herself at the front line of making sure people have equality in housing, a person’s biggest life investment and step towards generational wealth. In 2020, Governor Kemp appointed her to the Advisory Board of Georgia’s Commission on Equal Opportunity to help safeguard Georgians from housing discrimination. Her contribution with improving Georgia’s fair housing law (not amended since its enactment in 1988) to align with federal law earned her the role of Vice-Chair for the Commission in 2021.

Ashoo believes “alone we can do so little, together we can do so much,” and in that spirit, she helped her company’s CEO in short time achieve so many impactful diversity milestones.

Ashoo’s DEI work earned her and the company the 2022 Diversity Champion Award from Georgia’s legal community. HNR’s first official company meeting for the year covers a diversity of topics to impress upon the employees and agents that is not something to check off short term, but a way to do business now and beyond. Ashoo will continue to be a diversity champion empowering her company, big Berkshire enterprise, and the industry. She is regularly invited to panels to talk about DEI, best in-house practices, and real estate law. Ashoo also serves on the Board of Association of Corporate Counsel where she gets opportunity to impact the in-house industry and professionals.

Ashoo Sharma - Atlanta 2024

Vice president and general counsel | Harry Norman, REALTORS, a Berkshire Hathaway Co.

Ashoo Sharma, vice president and general counsel of Harry Norman, REALTORS®, is a force of change, embodying the true spirit of a powerful leader in the real estate industry. Reporting...

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Ashoo Sharma

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