Elite Honor Award

Michael Bethoney is the founder of the Bethoney Shen Team at Nest Seekers International, where he has spent more than a decade shaping new development across New York City. He trained as a lawyer first, focusing on intellectual property transactional work, and passed both the New York and Massachusetts bar exams before moving into brokerage full time. That legal background still shows up in how he works, from contract structure to negotiation to the way he builds a building’s identity long before the first unit hits the market.

His track record includes more than $1 billion in closed transactions and oversight of the branding, marketing, and sales or leasing strategy for close to $6 billion in new development inventory. His project list runs from Skyline Tower, where he sold more than 240 units in 2021 alone, to Lucent33, Greene LIC, 567 Ocean, Neighborly, and 184 Kent Avenue.

In 2020 he formalized his partnership with Nayi Shen. Together they built a fully bilingual team serving both American and Chinese buyers, one that has been ranked a Top 3 Mega Team in New York from 2020 through 2025, a Top 3 NYC New Development Team by The Real Deal from 2022 through 2025, and New Development Team of the Year for 2025 by the RED Awards.

Nayi Shen is a founder of the Bethoney Shen Team and one of the most globally connected new development leaders in New York City. She first earned a real estate license while studying in Iowa, simply to understand her husband’s career. After moving to New York, she closed a rental deal on her very first day in the city and made close to $80,000 within two months. From there she became a top producer, joined Douglas Elliman to broaden her skill set, and was later recruited as broker of record for a funded international startup, where she led an 80-agent office.

Her move into new development became the turning point. Because she understood how both American and Chinese buyers make decisions, she became a bridge between developers and the international market, speaking directly with Mandarin-speaking clients and their families overseas. She met Michael Bethoney at Neighborly, a 77-unit project that was only half sold at the time. They sold out the remaining units pre-construction and made it the top-selling building in New York that year.

Nayi built the team’s dual-market marketing platform, placing projects on Xiaohongshu and WeChat alongside traditional U.S. channels. She also guides developers on unit mix, pricing tiers, and inventory release timing, and is often the only woman at the table in development meetings.

Frank Ko works at the intersection of three fields that rarely overlap: real estate development, investment advising, and accounting. He is owner and CEO of J & F Group NY LLC, owner and managing partner of Blue-Ribbon Accounting & Tax, and an associate broker with E Realty International.

Born in Taiwan and raised in Elmhurst, Queens, Frank started out in international trading before moving into accounting. His work in tax planning and financial strategy gave him a close view of how wealth is built, protected, and grown, and that led him toward real estate as an investment vehicle. He became a licensed agent while acquiring properties of his own, and what began as a way to strengthen his personal investments grew into representing clients, evaluating deals, and identifying value-add opportunities. Over time his focus shifted toward commercial assets, where his accounting background carries the most weight. He runs the accounting practice alongside his wife and is currently working on a development project in Queens.

Most of Frank’s clients come through referrals, and many of those relationships turn into friendships. Looking ahead, he plans to mentor young people in Elmhurst, teaching them how real estate works and helping them get licensed.

Vincent Koo is the founder and team lead of The Alliance Team at eXp Realty, and he has built a two-decade career on a simple idea: exceptional results come from exceptional support. He is known as much for developing agents into consistent producers as he is for high-performance sales.

A native New Yorker, Vincent grew up watching his parents build a brokerage, which shaped his view that real estate will always be a people business. He earned an economics degree from Binghamton University and started out in wealth management, but stepped in to carry the family business forward after his father was diagnosed with brain cancer. Over the following years he owned and operated three brokerages across Manhattan, Queens, and Long Island, managing more than 350 agents between them.

Today The Alliance Team serves New York City and Long Island across residential, luxury, and investment sales, with five consecutive eXp ICON Awards to its name. Vincent is an eXp Certified Mentor and Success Certified Coach, and the team gives its agents daily power-up sessions, full operational support, and equity and revenue-share opportunities that are rare in the industry.