As the association prepares for CEO Dale Stinton’s retirement, let’s pause to thank the leader who navigated us skillfully through a turbulent time.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last 35 years while serving REALTOR® associations at the local, state, and national levels, it’s that headway never happens by chance. It requires that people bravely and deliberately come together to push for innovation to spur revolution.

We have all benefited from NAR CEO Dale Stinton’s determination to set the highest bar possible while keeping the National Association of REALTORS® on solid footing through an era of tremendous economic and industry change. When Dale announced last year that he’d be retiring by the end of 2017, I breathed a sigh of relief—not because of his retirement but because he would still be in his seat for the majority of my term as NAR’s president. It has been a dream to work alongside Dale. He has served the REALTOR® community for 36 years, including the past 12 years as NAR’s CEO, and throughout his career, he has worked tirelessly, pushing to revolutionize our association, our profession, and our industry.

Over the last decade, our industry has faced unprecedented disruption. Real estate was at the center of the 2008 financial crisis that decimated global economies and left a sea of foreclosure signs in its wake. Our industry took an enormous hit, yet REALTORS® did not recoil. Resiliency is in our DNA—it was never a question of if we would recover but rather how we would recover.

We were all lucky to have someone in the right place at the right time navigating those rough waters. Anyone close to Dale knows that stagnation is not in his vocabulary, so even in the midst of deteriorating markets, he pushed our association forward. He drove our successful effort to permanently ban commercial banks from entering the real estate brokerage business and worked to obtain a home buyer tax credit that helped sustain the housing market after the crash.

With an unwavering commitment to REALTORS®, Dale’s tenure as CEO is defined by his forward-thinking, strategic approach to our business. From “Right Tools, Right Now” to REALTORS Property Resource®, from the REALTOR® Party to REALTOR® University, from Second Century Ventures to Project Upstream, Dale has forged effective partnerships with association leadership to ensure our livelihood is safe now and well into the future. Read more about Stinton’s tenure in this profile.

As we welcome NAR Senior Vice President Bob Goldberg as the new chief executive, let’s pause to thank the man whose game-changing impact will be felt for years to come. Dale is leaving NAR’s house in impeccable condition.

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