Sofia Bruno, 26
Vice president at JLL
Some people might say that beginning one’s career in the midst of a society-altering pandemic is unfortunate timing. But Sofia Bruno found opportunity.
Bruno joined JLL’s New York leasing division after graduating from the University of Georgia in 2021. COVID had injected so much disruption into the commercial real estate industry by that point — the meteoric rise of remote work, for starters — the viability of a career in the space wasn’t necessarily a given.
“When I was first looking into getting into it, I had a lot of people say, ‘You’re kind of nuts,’ ” Bruno said. “Like, ‘Are you sure that that’s really what you want to do?’ ”
Yet Bruno quickly realized, with the help of her mentors, that she was entering an industry that was reorienting itself in the wake of massive societal change. An exciting dynamic formed between her and those mentors, Bruno said, because they would sometimes need to find fresh solutions to certain challenges together in real time.
“Most of it was a typical mentorship relationship, but there was maybe 10 to 15 percent of the time where it was like, ‘All right, we’re in COVID — what are our clients interested in hearing? What can we tell them? How do we find solutions?’ ” she said.
“So that allowed me to be a part of that thought process. … You’re picking up on all of their habits and what they’re teaching you. But, at the same time, really kind of allowing you to think for yourself in a scheme where they’re not so comfortable either.”
Highlights from Bruno’s career thus far — which have helped earn her recognition as a JLL Brokerage Top Achiever in 2022 and 2023, and as a Gold Achiever in 2024 — demonstrate that dynamism.
In early 2024, Bruno’s team represented State Street Bank’s relocation to 30,000 square feet at BXP’s Citigroup Center tower in Midtown, in a move that coincided with the bank’s brand relaunch and to “meet the post-pandemic needs of its workforce,” per JLL. A few months later, Bruno’s team reconfigured a roughly 42,400-square-foot lease for Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath at Silverstein’s 1177 Avenue of the Americas, to provide the law firm a more collaborative space.
