Building communities that reflect our ambitious, welcoming and unpretentious spirit
Age: 39
Job Title: Division Marketing Manager with Rohit Group of Companies
After two decades of helping turn developments into award-winning communities, Marty Pawlina did what many Edmontonians who reach their professional peaks do — he left to Vancouver.
The move made sense for Pawlina, who’d spent the previous six years, from 2018 to 2024, helping sell Rohit Group of Companies’ vast portfolio — everything from Cromdale’s mixed-use community Stadium Yards to St. Albert’s 240-acre Chérot — and ultimately helping turn the developer into an Alberta powerhouse. Why wouldn’t he want to work in Canada’s pinnacle real estate market?
A former singer-songwriter who once toured as a musician, Pawlina had long been driven by the urge to perform on bigger stages. He brought that same ambition to commercial real estate at just 19 years old. So Vancouver, with its teal-tinted skyline and juggernaut developers, seemed like the natural next venue. The self-described “eternal optimist” anticipated prestige projects in Vancouver, but many were geared toward speculators rather than residents. He soon realized his real desire was creating communities where people could truly feel at home.
Pawlina calls it his “aha moment.” Edmonton was not a stepping stone, as he’d once believed it to be, but rather a stage of its own. “I wanted to be the best in the world at what I was doing, and I realized I could do that here. It was a good realization of what makes Edmonton so special,” he says. The contrast between the cities couldn’t be clearer. “There’s a real grit and humbleness in Edmonton that I love, in that almost anyone can just go have coffee with a CEO of a major company.”
He returned home and to his previous employer earlier this year, and has since co-founded his own company, Kairmar, with his wife Kairi Pawlina, to focus on rental homes.
And Pawlina doesn’t just bring smiles to the people when he hands them the keys to their new homes — he does it through volunteering as a regular musical act at the Stollery Children’s Hospital. In those magical music moments between player and patient, it’s not clear who smiles more.
This article appears in the November/December 2025 issue of Edify
