Meet the Co-founders
Lisa Gao
Lisa has very consistent communication skills and can efficiently analyze the needs of customers, support customers to identify a solution. She is also present quality skills at controlling direction and details. Lisa’s own investments spread from Beijing to the Bay Area, California and Arizona State. She can target different situations and provide just-in time suggestions. Proficiency in the selling market and house sales process, striving to create the best quality seller and house swap service are characteristics that most customers can recognize out of her abilities.
Melanie Griswold
Melanie Griswold brings a wide breadth of experience as a lawyer, developer, real estate broker, property manager and former Vice Chair of the City of San Jose Planning Commission. As a land use consultant, she advises clients how to best achieve their land use objectives in the most expeditious and cost-effective manner. Ms. Griswold specializes in utilizing state housing laws to solve difficult development challenges and to obtain entitlements over and above what would be allowed under local law.
Hestia Real Estate Inc.
Since graduating Harvard Law School in 2004, Ms. Griswold has practiced law at the highest level, spending 7 years as a civil litigator for one of the nation’s top law firms and 8 years as a prosecutor for Santa Clara County where she tried numerous cases to jury.
Ms. Griswold is a licensed California real estate broker focused on redevelopment opportunities. She has managed rental properties for more than 15 years and is a California Certified Residential Manager through the California Apartment Association. She has been involved in the entitlement and management of real estate assets valued at more than $750 million.
Hestia Real Estate Inc.
Ms. Griswold is actively involved in the community and believes strongly in giving back. She is a frequent speaker at the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors and National Association of Realtors, of which she is also a member. Ms. Griswold teaches trial techniques for Stanford Law School. Through 2019, she was the co-chair of the Santa Clara County Bar Association’s Law-Related Education Committee and she currently serves on both the Law-Related Education and Judicial Evaluation Committees. In 2019, Ms. Griswold commitment to education and ethics earned her the Bar Association’s highest honor, the Bryl Salsman Award.
In her free time, Ms. Griswold enjoys spending time with her husband Jimmy and twin boys.
