How 2 friends created 1 of the best female-led teams in New York City

Sometimes two people cross paths and the timing isn’t quite right, but later it can lead to a great collaboration. Something like this happened between Allison (“Alli”) Chiaramonte and Tania Friedland, and the two had no idea at the time that they would one day build a powerful team at Compass in New York City.

“We became friends working on this team [at a different firm]’, Chiaramonte recalls. “Honestly, Tania trained me. I [did not come] of real estate and the team leader was not the one to answer my questions. It was Tanja.”

The two women met while working at Brown Harris Stevens, then went their separate ways for a few years and reunited when both ended up at Coldwell Banker Warburg in 2019. Shortly after, they decided to launch their own team, the ATelier teamat Compass because they realized they worked better together than separately.

Today, the ATelier team is the eighth-largest small team in New York by sales volume, according to RealTrends, and the number one female-led team at Compass in New York. By the end of 2025, they expect to close sales volume of $221.83 million for the year.

Here’s how Chiaramonte and Friedland worked together to create one of the best female-led teams in New York City.

Playing the long game with customers

This year, the ATelier team saw a noticeable shift in the number of customers who decided to use the team for buying and selling on subsequent transactions. Chiaramonte and Friedland attributed the evolution to the team’s practice of nurturing customer relationships.

About halfway through the year, the team checked their sales volume and realized that their numbers were well above 2024 numbers, even though it felt like a challenging year to close every transaction. They then realized that almost a third of their turnover came from clients working with the team to buy and sell two different properties.

“I think part of it is just maintaining relationships and having people trust us to make these big life decisions,” Friedland said. “The other part is just the stage of life people are in: they need more space for growing families, or they are downsizing from the large homes they’ve lived in for many, many years….”

Chiaramonte added: “I also think that in the real estate agent career you generally get your breaks with buyers – that’s kind of where I feel like our momentum originally started… and I feel like you know you’ve made it when you start getting the listings. I think the bar for being a good real estate agent is very high… and I think that’s a real vote of confidence, and I’m very proud of the show booth that we’ve built. I feel like a lot of previous Successful real estate agents will actually get some great buyer opportunities, but it’s when you see the offers coming in that you reach the next level.

Tenacity

Although Chiaramonte and Friedland had one of their best years yet, they said it felt like one of those years where they had to push extra hard to get deals done. It took a lot of hard work and perseverance to make all of this happen for their customers.

“In a year when there are a lot of political/financial markets/macro things going on, when people are stressed, every real estate transaction has to be much more perfect,” Chiaramonte said. “You really have to connect the dots, and I think we really felt that.”

Friedland added, “In those global environments, people become very emotionally tense, so to speak, and they translate that into the real estate transaction. So it becomes a more emotional process than it ever was or should be. But in real estate transactions, people are buying and selling one of their most expensive assets, and there are a lot of emotions and feelings associated with that.”

In an extreme example of the kind of year it’s been, the pair finally closed a deal in early December that was first contracted a whopping three years ago.

As sellers have adjusted their prices to a normalizing market, the teammates have also found themselves in several multiple-offer situations this year, which has also made their work more challenging. The pace of regulatory agencies in the city also seemed slower this past year, with things like background checks and approvals by co-op boards appearing to take much longer than in previous years, the teammates said.

With a new mayor in town and the US economy still uncertain, several clients of the ATelier team this year were also very concerned that they would only buy if they could strategize a “way out” of the property in the coming years. That has required Chiaramonte and Friedland to be extra attentive in every transaction, alerting clients if they feel their investment in a property will not pay off in the time frame the client is hoping for.

“People think about that freedom of choice and if I buy this house, how am I going to get out of it in two years, five years, 10 years, whatever it is,” Chiaramonte said. “So really continuing to work with people, not just finding a great apartment today and a great deal, but working through renovations: what makes sense, what doesn’t, different uses of funds, and how does that compare? And the time value of owning multiple apartments and renting while you’re renovating becomes a bigger piece of the puzzle that we find ourselves in that I don’t think we were before.”

Maintaining good relationships

Maintaining good relationships within the greater New York City real estate community and with each other is another secret to Chiaramonte and Friedland’s success.

“Especially on the Upper East/Upper West Side, it’s a very small real estate town here and we see the same people,” Chiaramonte said. “So really knowing who to contact about what’s going to happen, even who to ask for an opinion about their experiences with the [co-op] on board where they’ve transacted, and maintain those relationships within the industry and use them to help our clients, I think it’s been important and an effort to grab a drink with those brokers as well as our clients, and not just be an island among us.

The duo said they balance business and friendship well because of their down-to-earth temperament, honesty and skills that strengthen each other.

“Our strengths and weaknesses are different, but they complement each other,” Friedland said. “I also don’t think either of us are hot-headed. So if one of us needs to take charge of something or has a strong opinion, we’ve never had a situation where the other one says, ‘I strongly disagree and I’m going to put my foot down.’ We both have strong opinions, but we are easy-going and gentle in the sense that we respect each other’s opinions.”

Despite their gentle personalities, the pair have learned how to seamlessly balance their roles with specific clients, with one of them playing ‘good cop’ with one client and then playing ‘bad cop’ with another, and vice versa. Since all women now have families, it is also a huge relief for them to be able to rely on each other when their personal lives become heavy with responsibilities.

“I feel like having each other has allowed us to be flexible and present in our lives and grow the company in ways we could never have done without each other,” Chiaramonte said. “And it’s a hard thing too. It gets discouraging as you go, and I think someone will pick you up and encourage you [you on] has been really great.”

“We spend a lot of time together and we end up buying a lot of the same or similar things,” Friedland added. “So sometimes when we have both [bought] the same thing is new and we’re excited to wear it, but we go somewhere, we call each other before the meeting and say, ‘I want to make sure you don’t wear that!’

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Email Lillian Dickerson