David Lipson

While some firms had to lay off brokers and teams to weather the pandemic, Savills went in the other direction.

Over the past year, the company’s North American division acquired project management firm Macro Consultants, more than doubled the size of its workplace practice team, made some new senior hires, and recently bolstered its life sciences division when it acquired brokerage T3 Advisors this month.

“We think it’s an amazing opportunity for us; the business is, obviously, rapidly changing,” David Lipson said. “People are coming out of this going, ‘How do I reinvent the business?’ and, ‘I really have to think differently about my relationships with our employees’ — and it’s our job to figure out how to reinvent the business.”

The company has also been trying to increase diversity amongst its ranks, and launched a junior broker development program and an internal employee resource group of Black employees and allies.

“Our first class was 90 percent diverse and the second class, which we selected, is similar,” Lipson said about the program. “We need to do more; we need to expand our hiring pipeline.”

Lipson, a D.C. powerhouse broker, has been with Savills for 32 years and co-managed the mid-Atlantic region for almost 15 years. He created Savills’ federal government practice and has served on its North American board since 2004. In May, Lipson was promoted to president of the North American division — where he’ll work out of the D.C. and New York offices — and will be mostly stepping away from brokering deals.

For the next year, Lipson is focused on getting the firm, more or less, back to where it was before the pandemic and helping its clients return to the office.

“We’re not only advising clients, but we’re a company and we have to make it work,” he said. “We’re in the office real estate business; it’s part of our business to figure out how to do it right.”