Stephen Cadorette, 27

When Stephen Cadorette has to negotiate for his biggest client, he personally has a lot on the line.

The Long Island native, who currently lives in that isle’s town of Huntington, works on the municipal account for Suffolk County, handling leasing for the local government. “It’s different when you spend taxpayer dollars, especially when it’s your own tax dollars,” Cadorette said. “It’s definitely something you want to do well on.”

And he seems to have been doing his and his neighbors’ tax dollars some good. He’s worked on about 200,000 square feet of deals for the county in the past 12 months, the biggest being the 82,200-square-foot renewal for the county’s Department of Social Services at 3085 Veterans Memorial Highway in Ronkonkoma, N.Y.

“We were able to save money on all of the deals, which I think is a rare occurrence,” Cadorette said. “So every time it seemed to be a net positive for everyone.”

Aside from his work with Suffolk County, Cadorette’s Cushman & Wakefield team also got the assignment to lease the office and medical space at Tritec Real Estate’s $1.2 billion Station Yards project being built around the Ronkonkoma train depot.

Cadorette got the real estate bug after several internships in the industry while studying at Babson College in Massachusetts. He was able to land a job at C&W’s Long Island office after graduation, and has been there for five years.

But life almost took a different path. Before Cadorette landed his first real estate internship, a cousin’s friend had lined up an internship for him at Def Jam Recordings, but that fell through when the friend got a new job at the label and couldn’t take on an intern.

“Then I started toward real estate because it seemed like a more sustainable career path,” Cadorette said.