O’Connell leads New York’s Daniel Gale, a franchisee of Sotheby’s International Realty with nearly 900 agents who do approximately $5 billion in annual sales. She joined the company as a sales manager in 2007 when it acquired her five-year-old real estate business, Deidre O’Connell Realty. O’Connell began working in real estate in 1991 following a career in public and employee communications for a major insurance company.