Dublin graduate Hannah (Hutchins) Whitehead works in Fort Worth as a commercial real estate broker. She loves living in the city and working in the corporate world. Over the years, her appreciation for her hometown has only grown, and she’s grateful to have grown up in Dublin.
Whitehead graduated from Dublin High School in 2012, and went on to attend Texas Tech University in Lubbock. “I actually changed my major like four different times,” she said. “I went in having no clue what I wanted to do. My dad was a physician, so I just always assumed that I was going to follow in his footsteps and do that, because I was always fascinated by medical stuff as a kid.”
Whitehead soon decided she didn’t want to spend the next decade in school, and would rather choose a career she could start doing within four years. She met several people from the business school through her sorority, and her sophomore year she switched her major to business.
“That was a totally different world,” she said. “I got involved with a business fraternity, and that’s kind of how I started to hone in on marketing specifically.”
Whitehead graduated in 2016 with a degree in business marketing. Through a connection with one of her sorority sisters, she found a job as a recruiter in Dallas at a management consulting company called Korn Ferry International. “I was on the phone, all day, every day, interviewing people for jobs,” she said.
She worked on various client accounts, including Verizon and Spirit Aerosystems. “It was just basically getting to know people — tell me about yourself, your career history, how did you get to where you are today,” she said. “And then just hitting on the technical qualifications of the job. It would be like little 30 to 45 minute phone screenings all day long, and then having to justify why you’re rejecting this person for the role or passing them through to the hiring manager.”
The job was a great first position. “It was a really great first job for me, because I learned how to talk to people, how to structure a conversation and get the information that I needed, I didn’t realize how foundational that skillset would be later on in my career” Whitehead said.
“I was in Dallas for four years, and then my job moved me to Fort Worth to work on a specific account — a medical device company in Fort Worth called Alcon,” said Whitehead. “I lived in Fort Worth starting in 2019 and I haven’t left since. I love Fort Worth.”
During the pandemic, Whitehead decided to change career paths. She started recruiting for a commercial real estate company called Stream, and found she was interested in the work the company was doing. She decided to try and shift to working in real estate.
“I basically had to approach my team and say, ‘Hey, the job you hired me for is not what I want to be doing anymore. I actually want to go do this thing that I’m hiring people for, and I think I can do it.’” Whitehead said. “I had to really vouch for myself and make them believe in me. And that was very daunting and challenging, but it’s been very rewarding.”
Whitehead’s current job is what you could call real estate consulting. She works with clients who lease commercial office spaces. “It’s heavy on cold calling and business development,” she said. “I’m basically calling decision makers at large companies that lease office space and then helping them with their real estate needs, whether it’s renegotiating their current lease at a more competitive rate, moving to a new building, or even helping them develop a new building for their Headquarters, we see a lot of different scenarios.”
Whitehead enjoys that her job keeps things interesting. “There’s no day that looks the same,” she said. “I drive to Dallas pretty regularly as well to meet with my team over there. On any given day, I’m in and out of the office at least like two or three times for a tour or a meeting, sales pitch, or just to go look at a building or drive around in the market. I’m not at my desk most of the time.”
The job requires Whitehead to be innovative and personable. “I love that I get to use my creativity and find unique ways to get in touch with somebody or get their attention,” she said. “You’re trying to meet with people that are extremely busy — they’re running multi-million dollar companies and have shareholders to please. It’s a lot of having to be creative and stand out because they’re getting calls all day long. And then once you get them to agree to meet with you, then it’s like, ‘Okay, now, how do we win their trust and how do we win their business?’ I have a really great and experienced team; I reel in the fish, and then they come in and help me get the fish in the boat.”
Whitehead plans to continue in the real estate field. “I’ve been doing this for almost four years,” she said. Everyone tells you, getting into commercial real estate, it is not an overnight success type of career. It takes years of persistence to really build your book of business and your clientele. And so I’m at the point now where it’s very, very pivotal, and I’m starting to see the fruits of my labor. At this point, I see myself staying in this career for the foreseeable future.”
When she’s not working, Whitehead enjoys traveling, cooking new recipes, and spending time in nature. “I really enjoy going on walks around our neighborhood with my dogs and my husband and just being outside,” she said. “I love coming back home to Dublin to get my ‘country fix’. And It never fails, we always run into old friends, whether it’s at my family’s winery or someplace in town, It just feels nostalgic, Dublinwillalwaysbe‘home’.”
She and her husband, Grant Whitehead, got married in April of 2024 and just bought their first home in Fort Worth. Grant works in the oil and gas industry. The couple met on a dating app in 2020 during COVID. “He also went to Tech, and we have a ton of mutual friends that we’ve unearthed now that we’ve been together for over five years,” she said. “He’s from Carrollton, so being a Metroplex kid, he loves Dublin and getting out there in the country and having access to some family land.”
Whitehead’s parents, Jeff Hutchins and Laura Gambino, still live in the Dublin area. “My mom runs a nonprofit in Stephenville — she’s the executive director for Cross Timbers Family Services,” Whitehead said. “And my dad’s an ER doctor in Stephenville, and owns Lucky Vines Vineyard & Winery in Dublin.”
Her parents are a source of inspiration for Whitehead. “They overcame a lot of adversity in their lives,” she said. “They started a family when they were 18 and 19 and they both made it through college in four years and supported each other through college. And then my dad went on to medical school and my mom was able to help support our family with her teaching job during that time. They’ve really been very inspirational to me throughout the years with how much success they’ve been able to achieve, with so much responsibility on their plate. I credit them for my work ethic.”
Throughout her life, Whitehead has remained close with her best friends from high school, Mariah (Reeder) Schultz, Kinsey (Coleman) Teague, and Lauren (DeJong) Reitsma and many others. “These girls were all in my wedding,” she said. “I didn’t know It at the time, but I met my lifelong best friends at Dublin High School.”
Whitehead’s advice to Dublin graduates is to explore the world beyond our small town. “I had no idea going into college that I was going to end up in the business world,” she said. “Just growing up in Dublin, that’s just kind of the nature of it. The work force consists of a lot of agriculture, health care, education, types of jobs. There are not a whole lot of CPAs, attorneys, or, you know, certainly not a lot of commercial real estate brokers. There aren’t a lot of examples in the way of corporate jobs. Going into college, you don’t know what will catch your interest. Just try to be open and try to learn as much as you can about the different career paths that are available to you, and try not to silo yourself into what your parents did or what everyone else did that you knew growing up. There’s a big, wide world out there.”
Whitehead has grown a new appreciation of Dublin over her years living in Fort Worth.
“Growing up in Dublin, I was like, ‘I can’t wait to get out of here. I can’t wait to go to the big city and go live in Dallas or wherever I’m gonna end up.’” Whitehead said. “But looking back on it, every time I go home, I’m just so grateful that I grew up in Dublin and was not exposed to some of the things that you get exposed to as a young kid growing up in a large city. I’m just so much more grateful for it now. So I wish I would have just been a little bit more appreciative of Dublin and all it had to offer, and the community. I mean, it’s truly a gem of a town.”
Where are they now chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen. com.