Meet the rising stars making waves in commercial and residential real estate in 2020

Emily Neff's year changed drastically in March, as offices closed across the world. Her clients, who usually would ask her about how much office space they need and how they should use it, were now asking her how they could use the offices at all.

"That's been a curveball that's been thrown at us," Neff said.

Neff stepped up to help CBRE pioneer its Workplace Reset service which prepares companies to reenter the office during a global pandemic. She's been navigating clients on what safety measures to put in place, what signage should be set up around the office, and overall office design. She's also been advising them on the price of all of these changes.

"We help clients understand how much it will cost to make these changes and reopen, and are those costs worth it." Neff said. "We help them understand the roadmap to reopen."

While she's become a trusted confidant for some of the biggest corporations during unprecedented times, Neff's original plan was to advise families, as a family financial planner. She studied it at Ohio State, and spent her first year out of school at life insurance and retirement provider John Hancock.

When she realized that her career path would require as much sales as consultation, she began to look for a new career. She started at CBRE in 2011.

"Real estate brought what I wanted, engaging with people to help them implement their plans," Neff told Business Insider.

Tyler Biddle-Barrows' first client was a celebrity — he represented Charlie Sheen as a buyer's agent when the "Two and a Half Men" star bought a Los Angeles mansion.

After his successful start with the Beverly Hills agency Hilton & Hyland, he took a leap to move to New York, where he's mimicked what he did in Los Angeles: cultivating a list of clients strong enough to rank him in the top 1% of agents in the city.

So far he's participated in about $90 million in sales. By age 30, Biddle-Barrows had worked alongside top producing teams in three of America's major markets — Los Angeles, New York City, and Miami.

When the pandemic upended life in the spring, Biddle-Barrows' business goals immediately shifted, and he established a partnership with the private aviation provider Blade to serve as its exclusive real-estate partner.

Through the partnership, he enabled buyers, sellers, and property owners to safely travel to and from Miami and New York, a creative deal that earned Biddle-Barrows confidence from clients and colleagues in times of uncertainty.

He sees the future of real estate as intertwined with other sectors, including tech, luxury, and travel, and he is determined to continue to act as an innovator in the field.