Local Keller Williams CEO promoted to Seattle post

The two-year CEO and team leader of Keller Williams Realty's greater Springfield region has accepted a promotion that will send her to Seattle.

Michelle Cantrell, who has worked in the Springfield real estate market for 18 years, will become CEO of a new Keller Williams market center in downtown Seattle, as well as an office in west Seattle. She said she will stay on locally through the end of November to train her successor, Chris Russell, the current marketing director for Hogan Land Title Co. Russell starts with Keller Williams on Oct. 22, Cantrell said.

In Seattle, Cantrell will be working under Ben Kinney, a Keller Williams franchisee with more than 300 agents in six counties in the Washington area. Cantrell said her duties will comprise training and coaching real estate agents, and she said the market center in downtown Seattle is opening alongside her promotion.

"I'm very excited to take on a new challenge in a new area," Cantrell said, noting she would still have a connection to the Springfield office because she is a part owner. "Springfield's home. I'm very close to everyone here."

Before joining Keller Williams, Cantrell worked as a real estate agent for Murney Associates for two years and as an agent and managing broker for Carol Jones Realtors for 14 years.