Cushman & Wakefield just recruited a proven builder to lead its occupier advisory business from Los Angeles. Tom Maloney’s hire is a window into where the real estate talent war is being fought, and won.
When Cushman & Wakefield named Tom Maloney Chair of its Occupier Advisory Services in late April 2026, it was not filling a vacancy so much as making a statement. Maloney, recruited from rival JLL and based in Los Angeles, was brought in to accelerate growth, elevate talent, and strengthen the firm’s platform for the companies that lease and occupy space rather than own it. In a commercial real estate market being redrawn by hybrid work and shifting footprints, that is one of the most consequential seats in the business.
Occupier advisory is where strategy meets square footage. It is the practice of helping companies align their real estate with their actual business goals: how much space they need, where, on what terms, and how to adapt as the workforce changes. Get it right and you save a client millions while making them more agile. Get it wrong and you are paying rent on empty floors. It is advisory work that demands both hard financial rigor and a genuine read on how people want to work.
Maloney framed the mandate with the clarity of an operator who has done it before:
“Organizations need clear, strategic guidance to align their real estate with their core business goals, requiring deep strategic thinking and creative solutions. I look forward to working with the leadership team and the broader brokerage community to build on the firm’s platform and deliver for clients across key markets in the U.S. and globally.”
Tom Maloney, Chair, Occupier Advisory Services, Cushman & Wakefield
His new colleagues did not undersell the hire. Matt Chatham, President of Occupier Advisory Services, praised “an exceptional track record and a proven ability to scale and grow a commercial real estate advisory and services business,” noting that as companies face shifting demands, Maloney has built a career developing strategies that deliver agile solutions to evolving challenges.
Read between the lines and you see the real story: talent is the product. In professional services, the firm with the sharpest people wins, which is why the biggest brokerages poach senior leaders from one another the way sports franchises trade stars. Landing a leader of Maloney’s caliber is not an HR footnote; it is a competitive act. The best executive search in this industry is a form of strategy, and the firms that treat it that way pull ahead.
There is a lesson here for every company watching the ground shift beneath its market. When demand changes, you do not just change your product, you change who is in the room. Cushman & Wakefield is betting that the way to win the next cycle of occupier work is to put a builder in charge before the cycle fully turns, not after. That is how the smartest firms are playing 2026: hiring ahead of the curve, not behind it.
And it is one more marker of Los Angeles as a command center for commercial real estate talent. As the SoCal talent market keeps drawing senior leaders to run national and global platforms from Southern California, Maloney’s move is exactly the kind of signal we track: proof that this region is not just where deals happen, but increasingly where the people who lead the deals choose to sit.
There is a hiring lesson worth borrowing here. When a company hits an inflection point, the instinct is to hire for the past, the person who did the last job well. The sharper move is to hire for the next chapter. Cushman & Wakefield knows that the way you win the next cycle is to put the right builder in place before it arrives. Talent, in the end, is the only durable advantage a services firm has.
To Tom Maloney: congratulations. In a business built on relationships, the leaders who scale trust are the ones who last.
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Appointment & quotes: Cushman & Wakefield · citybiz · Bisnow
Chief Talent Strategist & Editor-in-Chief | 26-year global recruiting veteran, #1 bestselling author, cancer survivor & humanitarian. Founder of Recruiter Hustle, OC/LA's no-filter media platform for talent, finance & recruiting professionals. Heart. Human. Hustle.