Real estate is the only career Allison Grady Yena has ever known and wanted to pursue. Yena, managing broker with Ensemble, is a third-generation Realtor. She grew up watching her grandparents, parents and uncle working in the family business.

“Most of my earliest memories have something to do with real estate,” says Yena. “Stopping by the office to visit Dad and Grammy and Grampy, playing (safely) with the machete that both my grandfather and father used when they walked property . . . back when there was still dirt to buy. I still have that machete, by the way.”

Her first job was stuffing envelopes and answering the phones at the Duvall office. “Back then it was the Puget Sound Multiple Listing Association, and we had MLS books,” she recalls. “That was before the Internet, even before fax machines, call waiting and GPS. We actually had a microfiche machine in the workroom.”

Yena didn’t just grow up around the business, she learned it inside and out by working as an office receptionist, branch advertising manager and agent assistant. After graduating from Washington State University and a brief stint in Dublin, Ireland, she worked in a local real estate firm’s marketing department from 2001 to 2007 and held several corporate positions. When she couldn’t fight it any longer, and at the urging of her father, Yena earned her real estate license in 2007, right before the market crashed. She lightheartedly blames the bad timing on her dad.

Still, she became an award-winning broker and earned her managing broker’s license in 2016. Today, Yena uses her extensive market knowledge to assist buyers and sellers across King, Pierce and Snohomish counties with everything from luxury condos to equestrian property.

“I like to compare my business style to the perfect amuse-bouche,” she says. “A little bit of everything presented in the perfect bite.”