Drew Petersen, the new market head of Newmark’s San Francisco office, does not sum up his qualifications for the job by listing the millions of square feet of office space he’s helped lease or the dollar value of the big deals he’s closed.
Instead, the former coach focusing on athletic performance and mindfulness — the practice of awareness in the present moment — says the central theme of his decades-long, self-described “junkyard” of a career is “a passion for coaching and being involved in other people’s lives.” That's included working with professional basketball and Olympic-level athletes.
Most recently, Petersen honed those skills via a stint at Cambridge Leadership Associates, a Harvard-born consultancy that specializes in so-called adaptive leadership, which encourages problem-solving via learning and listening rather than top-down solutions.
He hails from Lafayette, a leafy suburban town about 20 miles east of San Francisco, and began his commercial real estate career some two decades ago as a leasing specialist at Cornish & Carey, which became a subsidiary of Newmark in 2014.
After spending time at JLL’s Sacramento office and Strada Investment Group, Petersen drew on previous experience as a coach of high school and later professional sports. For a time, he was the mental performance coach for the University of Washington’s men’s basketball team.
“I’d always kind of kept my hand in working with athletes on the side, even when I was in commercial real estate," Petersen said. Over the years, he has advised senior business executives, entrepreneurs and even a select group of athletes that took part in the 2020 and 2024 Olympic Games.
Petersen joined Newmark’s San Francisco office in May as an executive vice president and market leader. Northwest Market Leader Jon Mackey, who will work closely with Petersen, said Petersen’s “unique skill set” would make him a “differentiator” in helping to drive growth in an important market for the nation’s fifth-largest real estate services firm. Petersen talked to CoStar News about his career path. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.
How did your career begin?
I started out in equity investments, that was a family business my father started. I went from there to basketball and eventually professional basketball; I went from high school coaching to coaching in the WNBA and then a short stint in the NBA. The reason I got out of it was I was going to be gone all the time, and it would be difficult to have a family. So someone talked me into commercial real estate. I kept my hand in working with athletes on the side. I continued to evolve that private practice over the last 12 years while I was working in commercial real estate.
What brings you back to the Bay Area and real estate at this particular moment?
I’ve always had relationships in real estate, and I see it like I see every other business. It’s just people. At this point, it’s not really about me, it’s about the kind of impact I can make. San Francisco is the center of the next technology evolution, and it's incredible the energy that's here. You can feel it walking around on the streets.
What did you learn from your experience as a performance coach?
Years ago, I went to UC Davis for business school and became heavily involved in sports psychology and especially mindful performance, which is just being very deeply present. There’s a great program I went to at UC San Diego called the mPEAK program that was developed for the U.S. BMX cycling team. It marries the concepts of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction with performance. We can help people think through how they want to approach challenges and opportunities; it’s not to stand out in front of people and tell them, “This is what we’re going to do.”
Everybody has their own internal voice, and the more people listen to it, the more they understand themselves and the better the outcomes. I’ve told some of the Olympic athletes that I worked with that a medal will not change your life. The process that you take to get to that medal will. By focusing continuously on process and less on outcomes, you can often flow through the barriers of what you think is possible.
And you think that approach can transfer to commercial real estate?
Great question! I have no idea. We’re going to find out. My experience is this approach can be very effective and impactful, particularly if I’m not bringing my ego into the interaction.