Our Story

We're building The Valuation Collective for what comes next. And we'd love for you to be A part of it.

Who we are

We bring decades of experience in valuation, education, and building businesses with a shared belief that there is always more to learn, more to explore, and more you can do with the expertise you already have.

The valuation profession is changing. Rather than wait to see where those changes take us, we started asking a different question: What if we helped shape what comes next?

That question became The Valuation Collective.

We believe deeper knowledge creates more options. It can open the door to more complex assignments, new areas of practice, stronger client relationships, leadership skills, and work that better reflects the experience and expertise women bring to this profession.

And we believe education should do more than a CE. It should challenge you, sharpen your skills, build your confidence, and leave you better equipped for whatever you decide to do next.

As women, we know what can happen when we bring different experiences, perspectives, and expertise to the same table. We don't all have to work the same way or want the same things from our careers.

Co-founders Emily Braman and Megan Johnson-Judd

Megan Johnson Judd, SRA, AI-RRS

Co-Founder, Founding Instructor

An Orlando native with thirty-two years in residential valuation, she started appraising for lenders in 1994, earned her Florida certification in 1998, and in 2001 built Metropolis Appraisal Services. Working through the boom and bust of the early 2000s, she sought the education needed to perform work outside of lending. She turned no assignment away, became proficient in complex problem solving as a result, and made more on those deals because she knew everyone else had already turned them down. She also spent years as a direct contractor to Fannie Mae. Today she trains two trainee appraisers and meets the complicated end of residential appraisal needs: litigation support, bankruptcy and divorce, appraisal review, diminution of value. She is court appointed, and attorneys and realtors hire her to explain the work and develop a course of action for their clients.

Megan found early on that being a woman in this profession consistently presented obstacles that were tiresome, insulting, unfair — even humiliating. The rooms she walked into as a young appraiser were not always friendly, fair, or safe. It kept her away from the Appraisal Institute early on, and at one point she quit. But she needed the education to grow, and reluctantly returned. The second time was different, because she saw the changes: the improvements, the WOMEN.

The first room Megan built, in 2017, was the Facebook group Appraisal Basics, now past eleven thousand five hundred members. Her favorite thing about it is the makeup, because it isn't only appraisers. It's realtors, lenders, homeowners, and everyone who needs to understand valuation on a practical, user level.

None of this room building is new to her. She has been building rooms and raising money in them since before she was an appraiser, as a volunteer fundraiser of more than three decades for Devereux Florida.

At The Valuation Collective, Megan is not only a founder, but proof of who the credential is for.

Connect with Megan

Emily Braman, MAI, SRA, AI-GRS

Co-Founder, Instructor

A third-generation appraiser with more than thirty-five years in valuation, Emily Braman grew up in the profession. She started working in the office of her father, Charles P. Braman, MAI and attorney, when she was twelve, and joined the family firm in 1987. She purchased C.P. Braman & Co. from her father in 1999 and went on to expand the firm’s services and build a practice centered on complex and unconventional valuation work.

Throughout her career, Emily has gravitated toward the more complicated side of appraisal work. Her practice spans complex commercial and residential valuation, eminent domain, litigation support, review, and consulting. She has appraised five Frank Lloyd Wright properties, a 40,000-square-foot classic car garage, shopping centers, municipal properties, easements, and other unusual assets. She has served as a court-appointed commissioner in federal court, testified as an expert witness throughout Ohio, and advised attorneys, municipalities, school districts, counties, and public agencies on complex valuation matters.

Emily is a nationally recognized speaker, and believes appraisers can remain impartial while still being genuinely useful to the people who hire them. She has held numerous leadership roles within the Appraisal Institute, including President of the Ohio Chapter, and has taught both inside and outside the profession, including for the American Bar Association. In 2025, Valuation magazine featured Emily on its cover in “Finding Opportunity in Complexity,” a profile of the unconventional assignments and complex problem solving that have defined her career.

After spending much of her own career as one of the few women in the room, Emily founded Ascend Appraisers to create more opportunities for women in valuation to connect, learn from one another, and see where the profession could take them.

At The Valuation Collective, Emily brings together the threads that have run through her entire career: complex problem solving, education, professional connection, and the belief that women should have greater access to the knowledge and opportunities that allow them to build the careers they want.

Connect with Emily