About Rona Fischman
Our community in the greater Boston area is a good place to live. My efforts to keep it that way, and make it even better, have involved interfaith activity, domestic violence prevention, and work on environmental issues. My current project is a bystander intervention program that includes ways to stand against bias speech with people you know, as well as the ability to stand against hate in the community.
Watch for my blog every Monday.
Interfaith action: I am a founding member and early leader of the Daughters of Abraham. This is a group for Muslim, Jewish, and Christian women who meet monthly to discuss books and get to know one another. We started with one group in 2002, and now have nearly 700 women participating throughout the country. We were covered by PBS early on, here’s the video.
Leadership and teaching philosophy: “Fortune favors the prepared mind,” said Louis Pasteur. I agree. I have learned from experience that gathering information and making preparatory, non-critical decisions is critical for making good decisions. Those that are prepared will be ready to act with more efficiency and with more safely than those who have to “wing it” when the stakes are high. This is true for people buying a house; it is also true for people of good conscience who are considering how to stand up for their vision of our country.
Writing: I wrote for Boston.com Real Estate Now for five years. I came to that position because I was a regular source of local journalists about real estate. They appreciated that I told the truth, told it clearly, and frequently, told it with good humor. In November of 2012, I left Boston.com because it was a distraction from what was more important to me: my direct work with house buyers and the creation of a book for people like my clients. I am now writing on my own blog and a blog for my company. You can find the best of both on our FaceBook page.
Municipal volunteering: I was a member of the Somerville Lead Paint Task Force. I am currently a Fair Housing Commissioner. I have been awarded twice by the City of Somerville: once for disability advocacy and once for work against domestic violence.
Rona, the day job
I run a small real estate exclusive buyer’s agency in Cambridge, called 4 Buyers Real Estate. True buyer agency is a model high on counseling and low on sales. That fit in well with my prior training and experience as a teacher and a counselor. My Master’s degree in counseling and special needs teaching gives me a background in “people skills” as well as specialized knowledge about deaf, blind, and deaf-blind people, and people who use wheelchairs. My bachelor’s degree in English helped me hone my communication and writing skills and to organize my thoughts and plans. I share these skills with my clients and readers. Here’s a story about how it all began.
I filled this office with like-minded people who will talk you out of bad houses, help you find a good one, negotiate on it, and buy it with your rights intact. Please support my business, so that I can continue to do the work I set out to do in November 2016.
If you are looking for Happy Homeowners, the real estate blog, click here. In November, 2016, this website changed direction. My real estate clients can find out about that on my business Facebook page or website or business blog.
——–
Professional summary: I hold a BA in English Literature, with a secondary education teaching certificate, and an MS in Counselor Education. I counseled and taught teenagers and adults, specializing in language and communication. I have been reading and studying aspects of psychology, brain science, and communication as an avocation throughout my life. I wrote curriculum for non-violent direct action in the 1980s and 1990s, for projects against nuclear power and against domestic violence. I am is a founding member and early leader in the Daughters of Abraham interfaith book group model. I currently run a small real estate buyer’s brokerage in Cambridge, MA.