National tenant rep advisory firm Mohr Partners promoted Michele Shibuya to chief operating officer, months after naming Misti Meggs to a newly created role as its chief commercial officer in an industry where high-ranking female executives is relatively rare.
Shibuya, who is married to Mohr Partners Chairman and CEO Robert "Bob" Shibuya, most recently served as the firm's managing principal of operations since joining the company in 2018. She joined the firm after Bob Shibuya led a management buyout of the firm founded by Robert Mohr in 2017.
In Michele Shibuya's expanded role with the firm, she will continue to directly oversee human resources, information technology, legal and risk management and marketing and corporate communications. She will work in close partnership with Meggs and Chief Financial Officer Sohail Hamirani.
In an exclusive interview with CoStar News, Michele Shibuya said the newly created role of chief operating officer resulted from the tenant advisory firm offering tenant representation across several property types, including office, industrial and retail, experiencing "significant growth." That included adding new clients, expanding the service line offerings and adding market offices with a growing offering of services, she added.
"Now that we have put in place a solid management team, I am looking forward to tackling our growth strategy in correlation with our [environmental, social and governance] practices," she said. "Certain practical business processes work at smaller scales, but now we have to focus on scaling everything to match our growth. This includes building and maintaining an engaged staff; bolstering our IT posture to accommodate larger and more complex client solutions; and ensuring our best practices correspond to how we shape up in the market."
It was only last fall when Mohr Partners decided to more than double its U.S. brokerage team in the next five years. The ambitious growth plan came at a time when Fortune 500 companies are grappling with their office portfolios upended by the pandemic. The firm plans to grow its benches in 22 markets throughout the United States and also add new markets to its offerings. The firm also has a presence in London and Singapore.
Mohr Partners has upped its level of review to accommodate clients seeking to track how their real estate services fall into their bigger environmental, social and governance efforts. This growing part of the firm's business also report up through the newly created chief operating officer role, Michele Shibuya said.
"We are looking at innovative ways to scale up our infrastructure by incorporating cutting edge technology and leveraging resources beyond our Dallas corporate office," she said, adding the advisory firm is also looking to further develop certain services lines, such as its global lease services and business analytics departments.
Recently, Mohr Partners formally established a corporate outsourcing business in India to support its growing lease administration, accounting and rent payments business for its corporate occupier clients. The firm has conducted business for several years in India through strategic partners with India and U.S.-based third-party outsourcing firms before deciding to hire employees directly in Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and Coimbatore to support its growing global lease services functions. This has become the firm's fastest-growing business line, executives say.
The new overseas office will have no impact on Mohr Partners' employees in the United States, who will continue to serve as account managers and oversee the quality control functions and perform all the lease administration and accounting functions working on behalf of clients who have a requirement that all work be completed in the United States, Bob Shibuya said.
Women Leaders
Meanwhile, Michele Shibuya's appointment to a role in the C-suite of Mohr Partners puts the commercial real estate firm in the upper echelon in the industry when it comes to bringing diversity to its leadership team, according to Mohr Partners.
Another global brokerage firm, Cushman & Wakefield, named Michelle MacKay as its CEO and she took on the new role this month. Commercial real estate, like many industries, has had a hard time recruiting executives that bring diversity to their positions. In 2021, the top leaders of several commercial real estate brokerage firms signed a pledge to advance women, diversity and inclusion at their respective firms.
The pledge was part of an initiative launched by the Commercial Real Estate Women Network; a professional association devoted to the advancement of women in commercial real estate. The pledge was signed by top executives at the group's annual conference.
"Gender equality within the workplace is rare, especially in commercial real estate, but we pride ourselves on making tangible efforts to achieve that goal," Michele Shibuya told CoStar News. "Not only do we have two women in the C-suite, [but] numerous individuals in our corporate management and executive team are women. Having two women in the C-suite shows that the idea of a glass ceiling doesn't exist at Mohr Partners."
By having women in the highest levels of the company's leadership show not only that Mohr Partners is committed to diversity, she said, but also reflects the advisory firm's corporate staff in Dallas. About 44% of its employees in the office identify as female. Michele Shibuya said as the firm continues to grow, she expects more talented women to rise in the firm's ranks.
Along with tackling her new role, Michele Shibuya also plans to begin an executive leadership training course at Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University in partnership with the National Minority Supplier Development Council, a nonprofit industry group aimed at helping connect minority-owned businesses with large corporate clients seeking their services. She has a degree from the University of Southern California.