Andrew McDonald
Global president and chief operating officer at Cushman & Wakefield
Andrew McDonald, the former head of Cushman & Wakefield’s L.A.-area operations, might have a more global focus now, but Los Angeles is still on his mind.
McDonald most recently worked as the CEO of the Americas for the brokerage but was elevated in May to global president and chief operating officer, taking over the role from Michelle MacKay after she was named CEO.
Since then, McDonald has been focused on making sure C&W’s long-standing culture of “excellence, creativity and diversity” remains across all the countries it operates in while ensuring its teams share the firm’s data and best practices.
Even with C&W’s global reach — McDonald spoke to CO while working in Australia — Los Angeles is still an important market for the brokerage. “We’ve been in this region for as long as any of our competitors,” McDonald said. “It’s a place that we continually will invest in.”
That was clear in May 2022 when C&W acquired the three-office team of Cresa Partners of Los Angeles to expand its Southern California reach. The deal included Cresa’s 40-person operation that works out of West L.A., Woodland Hills and Westlake Village, which exclusively represents tenants in the entertainment, technology, professional services, biotech and transportation markets.
“That’s a group of individuals that we respected for a great many number of years,” McDonald said, adding that Cresa’s niche fills “a very important gap” for C&W’s California team.
But, of course, C&W didn’t make this list just for buying another firm. It had plenty of other deals to write home about. These included representing Onni Group in Sony Pictures Entertainment’s 225,239-square-foot lease at 5750 Wilshire Boulevard, and brokering the $126 million sale of the Azusa Industrial Center, along with the $76.5 million purchase of a 405,130-square-foot office campus at 1801 Hughes Drive in Fullerton, Calif.
Globally, McDonald stressed that one of the big goals for C&W going forward is to increase the diversity of its staff. “Our vision is to have the most diverse and inclusive commercial real estate company in the globe,” he said.
Overall, C&W is 53 percent diverse by gender while its global management team grew its gender diversity from 6 percent to its current 47 percent in 2023, McDonald said.
