NYC Agent Frances Katzen Pivots from Playing through Pain to Paying It Forward

Frances Katzen is a pro at putting herself in uncomfortable—sometimes outright painful—positions. Long before she became a powerhouse agent and founder of the Katzen Team at Douglas Elliman , she was a professional ballerina who performed as a soloist with the American Ballet Theatre, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center and Miami City Ballet, among other companies, until a foot injury ended her career. “As much as I loved dancing, the truth is that the life of a dancer is typically short and often painful,” she said. “It’s a cycle of injury and recovery, injury and recovery, until your body just gives out.” Athletes, of course, are no strangers to playing through pain. But dancers—and ballet dancers in particular—can’t just dance through the pain. They have to mask it completely behind a show of grace and perfect poise, and keep going. Indeed, the same fierce drive, determination and grit that fueled Katzen’s success in ballet proved to be critical transferrable skills when she pivoted to real estate. And as it turned out, they also enabled her to mask the emotional toll—and yes, the pain—of performing the role of a New York City real estate agent. “We are all performing to one degree or another,” Katzen said. “That’s life. That’s just being human. But in real estate, so many of us are so focused being ‘peak performers’ that we ignore the aches and pains—or pretend they don’t exist at all. We play through pain because that’s what top performers are ‘supposed’ to do.” Embracing Vulnerability Just acknowledging that, she said, is both terribly frightening and wonderfully freeing. “It’s not something people in this business typically do,” she continued. “But I’ve learned from my business coach, who’s gotten me to where I am, that it’s all about the interior. It always is.” But embracing the profound vulnerability that comes with being candid about her struggles and insecurities has inspired in Katzen a desire to help her peers in the industry navigate their own. In April, she piloted a high-level workshop for a small, select group of real estate professionals, including the CEO of a brokerage. Although Katzen laughed at the notion that anyone would sign up—and that, somehow, she had reached the stage in her career when she would be asked to “bestow upon the younger generation” her accumulated experience and knowledge—she was both excited and terrified at the prospect of being able to “pay it forward” in some way. “I was on Bloomberg News last week, and I was not nervous at all,” Katzen said. “But if you ask me to go in front of people in my sphere and share a lot of personal things about how I work and what I do, I would rather clean toilets.” Happily, the risk was richly rewarded. Speaking after the two-day workshop, Katzen declared it “one of the most meaningful experiences I have had in my adult life.” Marveling at how “extremely up-front and vulnerable” everyone was—and noting that they were “fantastic brokers who were established in their segments of the market, not newbies”—she said that she was deeply moved by the trust they put in her. “What I found is that the minute you show you are as vulnerable as they are is the minute you meet at a very real level,” she said. “I think that the people who took the time and made the investment to be there were really ready for change—and it changed me in the process.” Outside of real estate, Katzen’s pay-it-forward mindset has led her to invest her time and effort in a cause she cares deeply about: protecting young people—like her 11-year-old daughter and five-year-old son—from the emotional toll of social media and excessive screentime. She recently joined the board of Common Sense , a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to building “a more healthy, equitable, and empowering future for all kids in the digital age,” and is in the thick of planning its awards gala in September, at the Ziegfeld Ballroom. Citing her background as a South African who grew up in Australia and has been “living in a concrete jungle for too long,” Katzen is also working with One Tree Planted , a nonprofit focused on global reforestation. “Real estate is clearly something that’s important to me, and there’s absolutely more I want to achieve,” she said. “But I’m at a point in my career—in my life—where I want to pay that forward into something even more gratifying.”