The final prototype, in the shape of a magnifying glass, stands tall in a 10th-floor conference room at real estate startup Compass, emitting a gentle glow from the inner rim of its ringed frame. At ...

When Josephine Gagliardo opened a real estate agency in River Forest with her son, Joseph, in 1958, she felt she could offer something the bigger local brokerages couldn’t. “A woman knows what a woman ...