Nicole Lu

This week on Leaders Creating Rukus, we sit down with multilingual commercial real estate broker Nicole Lu, who shares her fascinating path from world traveler to Los Angeles dealmaker. Nicole has worked in seven languages across Asia, Africa, and Europe, before returning home to California to help international and local clients identify U.S. investment properties. Whether it’s multifamily, retail, or land at every stage of development—from vacant lots to shovel-ready projects—Nicole’s specialty is translating each client’s objectives into the right property at the right time.

But her story is more than real estate. From studying Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese at UC Berkeley, to earning her MBA at INSEAD in France and Singapore, to nonprofit work in South Africa, Nicole’s career has been about building bridges across cultures, industries, and people. Today, as President of INSEAD Los Angeles, she continues to champion global connection while leading a top-producing brokerage team.

In this episode, Nicole opens up about:
🔸 Why listening is the most powerful sales skill you can have
🔸 How language fluency sharpened her ability to read people beyond words
🔸 Why commercial real estate is still male-dominated—and how women can thrive in it
🔸 The role of ego (and how to take yourself out of the equation to get better outcomes)
🔸 And why she believes everyone should take a sales role at least once in their career

💬 “It’s not about me. My job is to facilitate the best possible outcome for my client—and that means listening for what truly serves.”