Passing the torch

Almost eight years ago, I joined a small firm about which I knew next to nothing, a division of an Australian engineering company called UGL.?I signed up for a tour of duty based on an intro from a friend and executive recruiter that led to a couple of exciting conversations with two leaders. They shared with me a dream that we could take this relatively small company and grow it to be a true world leader. The dream would require leadership, tenacity, and a higher level of strategic thinking. It would require investments and infrastructure and change. But most importantly it would require talent.

Building teams is what I do best, and it is something about which I am immensely proud. Starting on my first day in March of 2014, I set about finding amazing talent, giving them room to grow and develop, and watching them shine through every challenge and every opportunity. Through both success and failure, I saw leaders emerge at all levels both from the company I joined and the companies we acquired. And I am proud of the leadership, comradery and strength of the team we built.

With obvious limitations of how much I can share here, I do want to highlight some of these success stories from the team:

• We built strong, global platforms that connect our people and our clients around the world for collaboration, client relationship management, human capital and financial management
• We have industry leading security and compliance solutions and best practices
• We have built best-in-class client facing solutions such as Prism, Atlas, TRIANA, Matterport and more
• We built a leading intranet platform and overhauled the global website, driving real revenue growth through technology and better connecting our colleagues, clients and the firm
• We built a Digital Advisory Service and Global Innovation Hub that provide access to and understanding of leading-edge real estate technology for our company and our clients

As we turn the page and start a new chapter in our incredible technology story, I have decided it is time to have new technology leadership at the helm. I have retired from my role as Cushman & Wakefield's CIO and Chief Digital Officer effective November 1, 2021. I am proud that I can experience something few executives in the c-suite have -- direct reports I have nurtured and developed will step up to ensure success of the team.? I am pleased to leave the technology organization in the very capable hands of the most amazing team I have been honored to lead. Sal Companieh and Oliver Skagerlind will assume my responsibilities as interim co-CIOs. Rob Franch remains Chief Technology Officer and Erik Hart continues as Chief Information Security Officer. And working alongside this management group are hundreds of AMAZING leaders who have done so much, worked so hard, and continue to truly change the company. #OneTDS #AlwaysTDS

I never expect to be in any one role forever, and certainly not when I have amazing leaders who can move up as I move on. It was time for a change, so my tour of duty has come to an end. For those of us who part as friends, walking away is never the end. So I do not say Goodbye. Instead, I say THANK YOU and?hope that you continue to realize how much you matter and how much you can in turn do to make someone else feel visible. You leave an imprint whether intentional or not.

Be well.?Lead on.

Adam