Title: Founding Principal
Company: Lee & Associates Tampa Bay
Location: Tampa, Florida, United States
Erika Zipfel Thompson, founding principal at Lee & Associates Tampa Bay, has been recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Executives for dedication, achievements, and leadership in real estate.
For more than 20 years, Ms. Thompson has been a leading figure in the real estate world. Following early time as a paralegal, her professional journey led to her becoming an industrial broker coordinator and salesperson for The Dikman Company in 2002. Establishing herself in the field, Ms. Thompson familiarized herself with multiple aspects of the company, including property management, leasing, managing offers, showing properties and creating market studies. During her first five years with The Dikman Company, she discovered that brokerage and other work that put her into direct contact with customers was her specialty.
Expanding her experiences outside of the realm of real estate, Ms. Thompson founded her own company, EZ Designs, in 2011. Serving as that endeavor’s chief executive officer and a design artist until 2015, she created crafts by hand. Concurrently with this, Ms. Thompson spent one year associated with TherxServices. Her positions at that company comprised recruiter, scheduler and payroll specialist.
Ms. Thompson returned to The Dikman Company in 2015, stepping into the role of commercial and industrial broker. Across an additional eight years with that organization, she worked with customers seeking distribution, manufacturing, office and warehouse spaces. Ms. Thompson built up a reputation with The Dikman Company for consistently delivering high-quality customer service alongside innovative new ideas. She also showcased impressive analysis skills that set her apart from others in the industry.
In 2023, Ms. Thompson’s career culminated with her becoming a founding principal at the Tampa Bay location of Lee & Associates, a well-regarded industrial brokerage firm. Her primary focus is on leasing and selling warehouses, while also occasionally representing landlords or tenants when necessary. Among her achievements while working with Lee & Associates, Ms. Thompson is particularly proud of recently completing the largest deal of her career. For this milestone, she helped a client close on the lease for a 160,000-square-foot warehouse, earning a $500,000 commission in the process.
For her education, Ms. Thompson was initially focused on the law, becoming a certified paralegal through the Segal Institute. She has since completed coursework in business administration and management at St. Petersburg College. Ms. Peterson has further added to her credentials with professional training, including becoming a licensed real estate salesperson through the Bob Hogue School of Real Estate in 2003. She is also a licensed scuba diver.
Ms. Thompson has been a member of several important organizations relevant to her field. Among them, she maintains membership in the Florida Gulfcoast Commercial Association of Realtors, the Florida Association of Realtors, the National Association of Realtors and The Junior League of Tampa. Ms. Thompson has previously provided guidance on the board of directors of the Commercial Real Estate Women Network, the Florida Gulfcoast Commercial Association of Realtors and the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors (SIOR). Additionally, she is credentialed through the SIOR, which reinforces her strong ethical standards and dedication to professionalism.
Beyond her career, Ms. Thompson is a loving mother to one son. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling, boating and scuba diving. Looking to the next steps in her professional life, Ms. Thompson is halfway through the process of obtaining her broker’s license, which will give her more options for expanding Lee & Associates Tampa Bay. She intends to make a major impact in the Tampa, Florida, area and compete with larger, more established firms.
For more information, please visit:
Contact Ms. Thompson: