Engel & Volkers Santa Monica Founder Sandra Miller Dead

Sandra Miller, a long-time industry leader and mentor within Westside real estate and beyond, died over the holidays.

A cause of death and Miller’s age at the time of her passing were not available from a brokerage spokesperson as of late Monday, when Engel & Völkers announced the news.

Miller, a prominent industry player locally and nationally, was a licensed partner of Engel & Völkers Santa Monica, opening the office in 2008 to mark the German-based brokerage’s first California outpost.

Her leadership extended beyond the business she owned; she held a seat on the California Association of Realtors Board of Directors and various leadership positions with the National Association of Realtors. Miller also sought to resolve issues between agents and brokerages as a presiding officer for ethics and arbitration for the Greater Los Angeles Association of Realtors. In more recent years she had stepped away from those trade association roles, but her impact on real estate was clearly widespread as news of her death was learned.

“Such sad news. She has the legacy of being a powerhouse and she will be missed.” John J. Dean Jr. from Engel & Völkers’ Boston office said on Facebook.

Uschi Brunner in the brokerage’s Denver office echoed on the social media platform the “powerhouse” sentiment, adding Miller was an “inspiration” and a “leader.”

“She was one of the best. I always looked up to what she achieved. I’ll miss her,” Charli Bullard of the firm’s Oklahoma City office said on Facebook.

Ignoring the naysayers

Miller, who had over $3 billion in career sales across residential, commercial and advisory, made the jump to real estate from sales in the telecommunications field. She managed to carve a path for herself in both industries, but didn’t sugarcoat the sometimes uphill battle that went into that effort.

She partially detailed what she called one of her “pet peeves as a woman” when it came to working in a sales environment during an interview with Engel & Völkers colleague Alan Canas. Canas is based in the company’s Burlingame office and posted a portion of that conversation on Instagram and Facebook in late December in a tribute to Miller.

Miller recalled how “especially the women, for some reason, will all tell you how hard the business is and how much you’re going to fail,” noting she found that same experience to hold working at both wireless and real estate companies.

“I saw that over and over again in my life and in my career and I watched it in other companies that I helped form within the wireless business,” she told Canas. “And, so I swore that I wouldn’t ever put myself in that situation in real estate because real estate’s even worse. Because a lot of these women… started when their kids were little, and they were doing it part time and they just kind of grew into it and so there’s offices filled with people that aren’t productive that can’t wait to tell the new people how bad they’re going to do.”

Miller instead took a different path and supported the mentorship program WomanUp to help guide agents and brokers nationally, the brokerage said in a statement released Monday.

The Engel & Völkers Santa Monica business is now being led by Miller’s son Steven Walter and brokerage manager Raymond Dominguez.

Information on a service or celebration of life is expected to be distributed privately.