Director, Transition & Transformation

Job Title

Director, Transition & Transformation

Job Description Summary

The Overall Transition Program Lead is accountable for leading the onboarding of new Global Occupier Services clients into Cushman & Wakefield's operating model, systems, and service delivery. This transition represents the client's first true working experience with the firm and is critical to establishing confidence, trust, and long-term success. This role serves as the single-threaded owner of client onboarding success, owning end-to-end transition execution-from early strategy and mobilization through implementation and stabilization-and ensuring a seamless, high-quality handoff to steady-state operations across assigned global transitions.

This Americas-based role orchestrates complex, multi-country, multi-service-line onboarding and transition programs-turning ambiguity into a clear plan, disciplined governance cadence, and outcome-focused delivery that supports long-term client success. The Program Lead operates at both a strategic and executional level, aligning stakeholders, managing interdependencies, and ensuring readiness and adoption across people, process, technology, and reporting. The work is fast-paced and schedule-driven.

This role requires an enterprise-minded leader with a strong Commercial Real Estate and Occupier Services background, exceptional program leadership capability, and executive-level presence. The ideal candidate brings change leadership, technology fluency, and disciplined governance, with the ability to drive predictable outcomes in high-visibility, high-stakes client environments.

Job Description

Our Core Values

• Driven: We celebrate determination in pursuit of excellence.

• Resilient: We navigate uncertainty with courage and adapt to deliver impactful outcomes.

• Inclusive: We value curiosity and collaboration. We seek out different perspectives, listen actively and turn feedback in to solutions.

• Visionary: Our continuous quest for improvement is guided by our desire to design a better future.

• Entrepreneurial: We act like owners. We are resourceful, creative, and agile, and we balance competing needs to create impactful solutions for the real estate industry.

Responsibilities

Enterprise Transition Ownership

• Serves as the single accountable owner for client onboarding success across assigned transitions, accountable for outcomes-not just execution

• Owns the onboarding narrative and client experience from contract award through stabilization

• Establishes confidence and credibility with senior client and account leadership through clear ownership, disciplined delivery, and effective decision-making

Project & Program Leadership

• Leads multiple concurrent transition and transformation programs in partnership with Account Leadership, ensuring contractual obligations and success criteria are met

• Develops and governs integrated transition strategies and program plans supporting complex, cross-functional, multi-service-line delivery

• Guides teams from early planning through go-live and stabilization, ensuring readiness prior to handoff to steady-state operations

People Enablement & Change Leadership

• Owns people readiness, role clarity, and adoption across service lines and regions during onboarding

• Partners with HR, Account Leadership, and Service Line Leaders to deliver change-ready teams through training, capability building, and adoption planning

• Applies structured change management methodologies (e.g., PROSCI) to embed new ways of working, not just launch them

Client & Stakeholder Leadership

• Acts as a trusted advisor and primary point of accountability for clients during onboarding

• Leads internal and client governance forums, ensuring clear decision-making, escalation paths, and documented outcomes

• Translates client objectives into executable onboarding and transition strategies

Risk, Governance & Quality Management

• Manages interdependencies across service lines, proactively identifying operational, contractual, and readiness risks

• Owns RAID management, mitigation strategies, and escalation cadence

• Establishes, tracks, and validates transition success criteria across readiness, stabilization, and quality measures

Technology & Data Enablement

• Ensures technology, analytics, and AI capabilities are embedded into transition workflows to support readiness, scalability, and informed decision-making

• Partners with technology and data teams to ensure tools, platforms, and reporting are operationally adopted

• Leverages analytics and AI-driven insights to anticipate risk, optimize resourcing, and improve delivery predictability

Operational Excellence & Continuous Improvement

• Develops and evolves standardized transition protocols, playbooks, and quality standards to improve consistency and scalability

• Measures transition performance and client feedback to drive continuous improvement and stronger delivery outcomes

• Ensures effective information management, documentation discipline, and data integrity across transition governance and reporting

• Additional Duties: Perform other related duties as required or requested.

Job Requirements and Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required; MBA or advanced degree preferred

• 5+ years of program leadership experience within Commercial Real Estate, Occupier Services, or complex service delivery environments

• Demonstrated experience leading enterprise-level onboarding, transition, or transformation initiatives across functions and geographies

• Strong understanding of Occupier Services delivery models, including Facility Management, Project Management, and Integrated Portfolio Management

• Proven ability to operate with senior client and internal executives in high-visibility environments

• Strong executive communication, governance discipline, and decision-making capability

• PROSCI certification preferred but not required

Targeted Competencies :

• Enterprise-minded, outcome-oriented leader with strong client credibility

• Calm under pressure; effective in ambiguous, fast-moving environments

• Collaborative influencer who leads through trust rather than authority

• Balances strategic thinking with execution rigor, translating ambiguity into clear ownership and measurable outcomes

• People- and technology-oriented leader focused on readiness, adoption, and scalable delivery

• Balances strategic thinking with execution rigor, with the ability to translate ambiguity into actionable plans, clear ownership, and measurable outcomes.

• Brings a people-and-technology orientation to delivery, ensuring readiness across workflows, reporting, platform enablement, training, and adoption.

This Role Is Best Suited For:

• Internal, high-potential leaders with strong client credibility

• Service line or platform leaders ready for enterprise-level accountability and cross-service-line orchestration

• Individuals seeking exposure to executive client ownership, global delivery models, and technology-enabled transformation

WORK ENVIRONMENT

This job operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets and fax machines.

PHYSICAL DEMANDS

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to communicate with others and exchange accurate information; operate a computer and other office productivity machinery; move about the workplace; remain in a stationary position for up to 90% of the time; and extend hands and arms in any direction.

May require some travel (up to 20%).

AAP/EEO STATEMENT

C&W provides equal employment opportunity to all individuals regardless of their race, color, creed, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by state, federal, or local law. Further, C&W takes affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and employees during employment are treated without regard to any of these characteristics. Discrimination of any type will not be tolerated.

OTHER DUTIES

This job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive list of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee. Other duties, responsibilities and activities may change or be assigned at any time with or without notice

Cushman & Wakefield also provides eligible employees with an opportunity to enroll in a variety of benefit programs, generally including health, vision, and dental insurance, flexible spending accounts, health savings accounts, retirement savings plans, life, and disability insurance programs, and paid and unpaid time away from work. In addition to a comprehensive benefits package, Cushman and Wakefield provide eligible employees with competitive pay, which may vary depending on eligibility factors such as geographic location, date of hire, total hours worked, job type, business line, and applicability of collective bargaining agreements.

The compensation that will be offered to the successful candidate will depend on factors such as whether the position is covered by a collective bargaining agreement, the geographic area in which the work will be performed, market pay rates in that area, and the candidate's experience and qualifications.

The company will not pay less than minimum wage for this role.

The compensation for the position is: $ 136,000.00 - $160,000.00

Cushman & Wakefield is an Equal Opportunity employer to all protected groups, including protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. Discrimination of any type will not be tolerated.

In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA), if you have a disability and would like to request an accommodation in order to apply for a position at Cushman & Wakefield, please call the ADA line at View phone number on click.appcast.io or email View email address on click.appcast.io . Please refer to the job title and job location when you contact us.

INCO: "Cushman & Wakefield"