Asset Services Insights - Fall 2016

Providing best-in-class commercial real estate management services to our clients across the globe requires being able to identify hazards and threats, and to respond quickly and effectively to these disruptive incidents when they occur. In an increasingly complex and insecure world, Jim Rosenbluth, Director of Global Security and Resilience at Cushman & Wakefield, develops reasonable security solutions to protect client investments, supported by a lifetime of experience. We recently spoke with Jim to understand the unique skillset he brings to Cushman & Wakefield and how our Global Security and Resilience platform is a not only critical in the world today, but a differentiator among our competitors.

Q Why did you decide to work with the CIA rather than the State Department? I have always been inclined more to action than being a passive observer. In the interviews, I came away with the impression that State Department Foreign Service Officers were more observational whereas the CIA was more activist. As it turns out, both are crucial in helping to shape history, so my initial impression wasn’t entirely accurate. Q Are you able to tell us anything about the things you did while in the CIA? I can’t go into any detail. Let’s just say that I fought in three wars—the Cold War, the Falkland Islands War, and the Global War on Terrorism. I lived in four countries overseas and conducted operations in dozens of others on three continents. I recruited and ran agents, worked with our foreign intelligence liaison partners, ran paramilitary operations on land and sea, and managed multi-million dollar programs. I conducted counterterrorism operations prior to 911 and supported our Special Operations teams in Afghanistan who took the fight to al Qa’ida and the Taliban less than a month after 9/11. My agency career took me from Argentina to Yemen although I never got to Zambia. That’s close enough for “from A to Z” for me.

Q Before we dive into understanding your role here at Cushman & Wakefield, can you give us a brief background on your unique professional background? I guess I do have a somewhat unusual background for someone in commercial real estate. My father was an electronics engineer in the aerospace industry so we moved around a lot when I was young. We lived in England, Spain, France, and Germany when I was very young and then moved to Tidewater, Virginia where NASA was then headquartered, followed by Houston, Pasadena, and ultimately the Washington DC area. I attended 11 schools by the time I graduated from high school, so moving around a lot was the norm for me. I studied journalism in college and had always wanted to work as a foreign correspondent for a newspaper. I graduated in the midst of a recession and couldn’t get a job, so I went back to school, earned a Master’s degree, and in the meantime applied to both the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) because this would enable me to live and work overseas. The State Department responded and offered me a position as a political officer to work in U.S. embassies abroad, so I called the CIA to withdraw my application. They ended up making me a job offer on the spot, so I took it.

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