In her fifth full year of real estate, Katie Gambla is a force to be reckoned with, achieving nearly $20 million in sales last year alone. Her strength lies in her humility, empathy and willingness to do hard work. Katie gives credit for her success to her mentors. “I was fortunate enough to have an amazing listing partner for about a year and a half before he retired from real estate, David Strauss, and he taught me pretty much everything I needed to know as a new agent,” she explains. “He still ranks in my mind as one of the best and most ‘full of integrity’ REALTORS® I have ever come across, and I will always owe a lot to him for putting me on the path he did.” 

Katie eventually struck out as a solo agent for a couple of years, and just last summer brought on a listing partner, Chris DeGeorge. Though they aren’t recognized as a formal real estate team per se, they work together well as a resource for their clients. She is grateful for her success and credits the mentors upon whom she’s relied for guidance and support, like her broker in charge, Tom Reed, and his brother, Rich Reed, who convinced her to join Charter One, and her father, who has had a long career in Beaufort. Strangers are continually asking if she is related to him and it inspires her that they tell her how amazing he is as a person and a doctor. She enthuses, “I am humbled to have the same reputation as someone who is just a good person to other people!”

Katie graduated from the University of South Carolina in Columbia and majored in Political Science and Psychology. She worked in Finance and Purchasing for Boeing in Charleston, then in Purchasing for a similar company in Florida. Her most memorable job, however, was a social work position for Hopeful Horizons in Beaufort, a local children’s advocacy, rape crisis, and domestic violence center. She worked on child abuse cases as a victim advocate with local law enforcement and the Department of Social Services to get children the help they needed after abuse and also worked with both parents and children to educate them on child abuse prevention. 

The work was hard, but Katie was suited for it. “Some of the main challenges I have had to overcome in my personal life are surviving trauma and abuse, so that is something I will always be passionate about, and it dictates how I spend a lot of my personal time,” Katie says. “I like to volunteer for and donate to Hopeful Horizons.”

Katie’s passion for helping abuse victims and her work in real estate intersected oddly over the past few years. In 2018, a stalker found Katie’s real estate profile online. He proceeded to stalk her as well as other women REALTORS® all over the country. He was eventually arrested thanks to a police report that Katie filed in Beaufort, which got other law enforcement agencies and REALTORS® involved across the country. “The stalker ended up being a serial rapist and murderer that law enforcement tied to cold-case murders of women in Texas,” Katie recalls. “It’s actually featured on an Investigation Discovery documentary series that came out this past May.”

Katie is humble and says she was just doing what she knew to be the right thing in reporting the terrifying behavior and crime. She’s continually amazed that she has been able to turn her past traumas around into helping other people, but she never expected that to intersect with real estate on such an intense and large-scale level.

When asked how she wants people to describe her, Katie says, “No matter what my job or career is, I want to be remembered as someone who is good to other people — it’s as simple as that.” And Katie is good to her clients, treating them as she’d wish to be treated. She says, “That doesn’t mean my clients always hear what they want to hear, but by the end of the process, they know I have exceeded their expectations and delivered the promised results.” She gives her clients direct advice, telling them, “If I were in your situation I would do this…” giving them the power to make final decisions. Katie’s unique skillset as a victim advocate and now client advocate has helped her grow her business in an organic and authentic way.