When office broker Laura Ford dropped by John Miller’s house, just chauffeuring her teenager for a visit with a friend in September, she didn’t anticipate the result would be moving her team at work to a new brokerage.
Anticipated or not, that’s what happened.
Miller is senior managing director of the Pacific Northwest at CBRE; Ford was at the time a top office broker at Colliers. The two have teenagers at the same high school in the Seattle area, and while they knew each other professionally and had talked about a move years before, the pair explained in a recent phone call that it wasn’t on their minds the day Miller’s daughter was having friends over — until it was.
“We got to talking and I couldn’t resist,” Miller said, describing the September get-together. “I had to ask, ‘Hey, would you ever consider making a move at this point?’ She sat there and thought about it for a second and said, ‘Yeah.’”
The meeting ended with Ford and her team of three discussing a move to CBRE from Colliers. The move came after CBRE announced the previous January that Tony Ford and Bill Cooper had joined as senior vice presidents, along with Joe Riley as a first vice president and Taylor Olson as a senior associate. Those four also came from Colliers.
Miller called the close timing of the arrivals completely coincidental.
With this latest transition, CBRE gained not only Ford, who has been recognized as a NAIOP Office Broker of the Year, but her office leasing team of Greg Inglin, David Abbott and Katie Nagle.
While lobbing the question to Ford that September evening was spontaneous, Miller said, the transition wasn’t.
After that September meeting, Miller said, the move went on hold again, and a month went by before they began to talk seriously about terms, a conversation that lasted another month. The deal went on hold for a second time — for yet another month — while Ford's team resolved an outstanding lease.
Then Ford and her team abruptly made it clear they were ready to move.
"I got a call randomly from them saying, 'We’ve resolved all of our issues, we want to make a move, and we want to do it in two weeks,'" Miller said. “And I was like, 'holy cow.'"
The Ford team started with CBRE in February.
“That is about how it went,” Ford said. “It’s funny how life brings you together.”