18 years experience in Real Estate, currently the Business Performance Lead Director within CBRE Limited, Central London Team Jacs is responsible for driving performance of the Property Management teams to ensure best in class service to a range of UK and overseas Landlords of trophy assets in central London.
In Jacs’s own words “the start to my career was not the most inspiring but perhaps that’s the most important point. Leaving school with very few GCSE’s, career direction and path was anything but clear. I joined a local Market Research company after college but after four years I left to travel and work oversees for the next two years. It was here were I started to gain wider life and work experience. Living in beach huts on different beaches in much sunnier and exotic parts of the world was exactly what I needed, and I absolutely loved it.
I returned to the UK two years later with a new focus on living and working in London as desired both living and working amongst a diverse set of people in the best city in the world and returning back to my home town would feel like a backwards step. I began working at The Jersey Trust Company in Mayfair, sharing office space with a newly formed Property Management Company – Property Initiatives. The penny dropped, property was my passion…the career path was formed.
Working in property and specifically Property Management is exciting and rewarding for a multitude of reasons. No day is ever the same! The opportunity to learn and utilise skills and knowledge through management of property is endless, whether you are interested in the legal side (leases, licences, contracts) or tenant/occupier/client engagement, sustainability, customer experience, prop tech, numbers – budgets/reconciliations, procurement, the list goes on and on.
The interaction with people across all areas of the Real Estate community throughout my career has created networking opportunities and deeply founded key relationships. This has been the joy throughout my careers as I cannot think of another profession where the mix of people is so wide and diverse and am very lucky to have met so many inspirational people.
What I love and appreciate the most is the real challenge and satisfaction of being part of a team that ultimately forms and manages the landscape of London. We manage some landmark properties recognisable around the world with architectural importance, which is such a great honour and privilege and what I remind myself of and continue to be very passionate about.
So the message is that from a very modest beginning, I have succeeded in achieving what I have today through taking the opportunities that arise and making those, not always easy decisions but ones that feel right and putting myself out there to ask for those opportunities – which has ultimately enabled me to find and continue to work in an industry that I love, and with the largest commercial real estate services company in the world!”
