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Bruce Mosler

A Community Culture

Editors’ Note

Prior to assuming his current position in January 2005, Bruce Mosler served as Cushman & Wakefield’s President of U.S. Operations and, before that, as Executive Vice President. A leader in the global commercial real estate industry, he is also an active philanthropist and the recipient of numerous business and civic awards and honors. Mosler serves as Vice Chairman on the Board of the Intrepid Museum Foundation, as well as on the boards of the New-York Historical Society, the Achilles Track Club, the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, and the Partnership for New York City, among other professional and civic affiliations.

Company Brief

Headquartered in New York, Cushman & Wakefield (www.cushmanwakefield.com) is the world’s largest privately-held commercial real estate services firm, offering a complete range of services within four primary disciplines: Transaction Services, including tenant and landlord representation; Capital Markets, including property sales, investment management, valuation services, investment banking, and debt and equity financing; Client Solutions, including integrated real estate strategies; and Consulting Services. Founded in 1917, it now operates 221 offices in 58 countries with more than 15,000 employees.

How critical are corporate responsibility and community involvement to the culture of Cushman & Wakefield? How do you drive that through the organization?

The importance of community and social responsibility are at the core of Cushman & Wakefield’s culture. We want our professionals to be active in their communities, because it provides them an understanding of what the challenges are in their communities. It also provides them a chance to learn by being involved in community service. Making a difference is what Cushman & Wakefield tries to do on the business side of the ledger but also on the community side of the ledger.

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Cushman & Wakefield helped with the site of
a future boarding school in Tanzania

Do you try to hone in on specific areas where you can make the most impact? How do you focus the efforts?

We give our employees a significant amount of latitude in selecting the charities that they want to get involved in. On the other hand, we also ask them to have some consensus among each other. Our younger, up-and-coming professionals – we call them our Jet Group – select a charity each year. We ask them to get together and reach a consensus so that they can make a bigger difference by working together. It allows them to have focus and support one another, even if that means participating in fewer charities.

For our senior professionals, we try to support the endeavors they get behind corporately, either economically or through providing real estate expertise. We don’t try to select the important charities for our folks in the end. The range of charities that they’re involved in is everything from health care programs and hospitals to help youths. Youth and education programs are some of the biggest charities we’re involved in. We also support our clients’ charities. As a firm, we recently launched our first global charity, Schools Around the World, which has the support of our entire firm on six continents. We are very excited about its potential to create meaningful change.

Is it important to have metrics in place to see the impact of community efforts?

It is important to have metrics to measure whether or not you are making a difference, but they might look a little different. For me, the metrics are whether a significant amount of the money that we’re raising is in fact going to the charity and not into administration and overhead and if it’s making a difference in the lives of kids. In other words, if we’re supporting a charity that provides programs for kids after school, is the program base expanding? Are more kids getting involved in it? Is it going in the right direction? Those are the kinds of metrics I look for.

Is there an expectation among shareholders and constituents that a company is going to be engaged in community efforts?

I don’t know if a company’s involvement in community charities translates into better business, but it does make for more well-rounded professionals and employees. Cushman & Wake-field’s brand is deeply associated with the community. There’s a generation of CEOs before me that made a decision that Cushman & Wakefield was going to become a great company not only by virtue of the service that we provide for our clients but also by the service that we provide for our communities.

Today there’s a focus on going green and having green buildings. How much impact does that have in the industry, and how much of a focus is it for Cushman & Wakefield?

I think it’s having a profound impact. Driving all of this is the employee base of these companies. Employees want to be in a green building and in a better environment. And therefore companies will ultimately get to that place – if they’re not there already – where we’re willing to pay more to get to more environmentally conscious buildings. Cushman & Wakefield is always at the forefront in terms of going green within our buildings and with our developers and clients, and we’ve been recognized for that.

You operate in very diverse communities and have a diverse set of clients. How critical is it to have diversity within your workforce as well?

It’s one of the very, very top issues. If you’re going to do business around the world and be effective, then your company has to reflect that diversity. You can’t look just one way and expect to capture the trust and confidence of people around the world. Your organization has to reflect diversity. For example, Sanjay Verma is the head of our Indian and Southeast Asian operations. Sanjay is the best in the business; that’s why we’re successful in India. He applies the “corporate criteria” against what he thinks are the local customs and what will work to make our company attractive in that region.

Are there opportunities for women to grow in this business? Do you find that women are coming into the industry?

I think more and more women have the appetite and desire to be in this business, and young women who are looking for careers today want a long-term career path. And so this industry is becoming increasingly more attractive in general. The top two producers in Cushman & Wakefield several years ago were women. That was the first time that two women had gone to the top in a global firm. Year in and year out, these two are consistently in the top 10. And they’re role models. I think women are having a huge impact that’s contributing to the overall success of our business.