Robert E. Sulentic
Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer
2012 – Present
14 years (current)
Legacy
Sulentic has led CBRE through the expansion of outsourcing, project management, investment management, and specialized real estate services. He joined CBRE's board in 2006 and became CEO in 2012 after running the company's Global Investors business, overseeing CBRE's growth into the world's largest commercial real estate services firm by revenue through both organic expansion and acquisitions in project management and data-center advisory services. Under Sulentic, CBRE has diversified well beyond traditional brokerage into higher-margin, recurring-revenue businesses including facilities management, project management, and data-center advisory work, a shift that has made the company's earnings less dependent on cyclical property sales and leasing transaction volume. CBRE's 2015 acquisition of Global Workplace Solutions and its continued investment in Turner & Townsend project-management capabilities reflect this strategy of building durable, contract-based revenue streams that hold up better during commercial real estate downturns than pure transactional brokerage income, a lesson the industry learned painfully during the 2008-2009 financial crisis when transaction volumes collapsed almost overnight. He has overseen CBRE's continued push into data-center services and development as AI-driven demand for computing infrastructure has made data-center real estate one of the fastest-growing categories in commercial property, positioning CBRE's project-management arm, Turner & Townsend, to capture a share of the massive capital spending flowing into hyperscale data-center construction globally. He has led CBRE through several economic cycles as CEO, including the sharp 2020 pandemic-driven collapse in office leasing demand and the subsequent uneven recovery as hybrid-work arrangements permanently altered corporate real estate footprints across major US and European markets. He became Board Chair in addition to CEO in November 2023, consolidating governance leadership under a single executive as CBRE continued its diversification strategy. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. He also holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from Iowa State University.