Our People

Founder & CEO, Akachukwu Properties | Licensed Real Estate Agent Francis spent twenty years in the fitness industry before he ever sold a home. He was born in Chicago and raised for much of his childhood in Nigeria, where he attended school, before returning to the U.S. in 1996. He went on to study computer science in the States. That path, growing up between two countries and two cultures, shaped the perspective he still brings to his work today. He worked at some of the top health clubs in the country, including David Barton Gym, Lifetime, and Equinox, and rose to area director, overseeing four clubs and training more than 200 employees. His real skill was never the workouts. It was sitting down with a prospective client and doing the deeper work: finding out why they actually wanted change, so he could build a plan that would hold up once the motivation wore off.

He later turned his focus to real estate after buying his first home with his wife. They were disciplined about it, with a plan, a budget, and a checklist, and it still tested them. Over six months, they went to more than 180 open houses, seven most weekends. Their pre-approval expired three times while they searched. They drove to listings where no agent showed up to let them in. They called and emailed agents who never called back. Many buyers today know that feeling. Francis has been there.

What surprised him wasn't the difficulty. It was what came after. Owning a home turned out to be less about having a place to live and more about the doors it opened: equity building, investment properties, rental income, passive income, the endless ways real estate could build wealth once he understood how ownership actually works. That understanding changed the way he thought about wealth for good.

Francis had lived in Queens and Long Island City before meeting his wife, who grew up in Brooklyn. After they met, he rented a place in Prospect Park South, fell in love with the borough, and stayed, commuting into Manhattan for work. By the time he decided to pursue real estate full time, Brooklyn wasn't just where he lived. It was home. He joined The Corcoran Group as a solo agent with one goal: to learn the business properly. His focus was clear from the start: residential sales across Brooklyn. He shadowed agents to learn how they worked and what they'd learned the hard way. Over six years, he closed millions of dollars in transactions across Brooklyn neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Ditmas Park, and Clinton Hill, along with neighborhoods beyond the borough. His deals spanned condos, co-ops, single-family homes, and multi-family properties, while he also built his own investment portfolio and managed rental properties for clients.

That experience became the foundation for Akachukwu Properties, a full-service New York real estate brokerage with a particular focus on Brooklyn, the community Francis calls home.

Francis approaches every client relationship the same disciplined way he ran his fitness teams: discovery first. Before any plan gets built, he wants to understand what a client actually wants and why, because no two purchases or sales are the same, even if the steps to get there are. He doesn't skip steps. Real estate is personal for the people going through it, even when it's business, and part of the job is managing that tension without losing sight of what the client is trying to build.

Education

Computer Information Systems (CIS) DeVry University, 1998

Languages

English, Igbo

Kreuza Ganolli Principal Broker, Akachukwu Properties | Licensed Real Estate Broker

Kreuza Ganolli built her career in law before she ever signed a listing agreement. She started as a legal assistant and paralegal, then pursued a law degree at New York Law School's evening division while working full time, earning her J.D. in 2013, where she was affiliated with the Diane Abbey Center for Children and Families. Before law school, she attended John Jay College of Criminal Justice, graduating magna cum laude and receiving the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship. While studying, she worked full time as a paralegal at a family law firm and interned with the Unified Court System, helping pro se litigants prepare uncontested divorce documents. Her legal practice today covers family law, including divorces, custody and visitation, child support, orders of protection, paternity, and relocation, along with real estate closings and wills and estates. She appears regularly in the Family and Supreme Courts of Brooklyn and the surrounding boroughs, where her firm, Ganolli Law, focuses primarily on matrimonial and family law litigation.

Kreuza is also a Licensed Real Estate Broker, a dual qualification that lets her guide clients through both the legal and transactional sides of a property deal. As Principal Broker at Akachukwu Properties, she brings that same precision and attention to detail to every transaction, making sure clients are protected on paper as well as positioned well in the market.

Bar Admissions

New York, 2014

New Jersey, 2013

Education

J.D., New York Law School, 2013

B.S., John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2008 (Magna Cum Laude)

Languages

English, Albanian