Female Disruptors: Dava Davin is disrupting real estate in Maine

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dava Davin, principal and owner of Portside Real Estate Group, one of Maine’s largest real estate groups. She’s also the founder of Portside Foundation, which raises tens of thousands of dollars annually to directly benefit local non-profit organizations and brings people together for Portside Gives Back event,. She is also a four time ironman finisher.

After a decade-long career in pharmaceutical sales and marketing, Dava Davin decided to quit her job and make a radical change. She wanted to work in the not-for-profit sector and make a real impact, a stark difference from the work she was doing at the time. “I was hollow inside and looking for more. Convincing physicians to change their prescribing habit so I could get a bonus took its toll on my well being,” she claimed.

It was 2008 and her family had just moved to Portland, Maine. Like so many, Davin struggled to find a job at all, let alone one in the non-profit sector with the economic crash. She “settled on an assistant job on a real estate team” and worked her way up to owning her own company in four years.

Real estate wasn’t exactly a passion for her at first. “I found it to be generic, boring and corporate,” she recalls. But Davin wanted to “But she I wanted to create a ”company where we…