John Sikaitis, Nick Guglietta and Carl Caputo join Avison Young to lead firm’s global innovation practice

Sikaitis named Principal and Chief Innovation Officer; highly regarded industry leaders will be based in firm’s Washington, DC office

Toronto, Canada – Mark E. Rose, Chair and CEO of Avison Young, the world’s fastest-growing commercial real estate services firm, announced today the strategic hiring of highly regarded industry leaders John Sikaitis, Nick Guglietta and Carl Caputo to lead the firm’s global innovation practice.

Effective immediately, Sikaitis becomes a Principal of Avison Young and Chief Innovation Officer; Guglietta becomes Global Practice Lead, Product Development; and Caputo becomes Global Practice Lead, Data Science. They will be based in Washington, DC and will continue to work as a team to take leadership of, and responsibility for, guiding the firm’s clients, transaction advisors and leadership team around new ideas, processes and products that transform the commercial real estate industry. All three join Avison Young from JLL in Washington, where Sikaitis was managing director of research, advisory and business development; Guglietta was senior director of product, data visualization and analytics; and Caputo was director of research, data and analytics.

“We’re thrilled to welcome John, Nick and Carl to the Avison Young family as we further our efforts to bring best-in-class innovation and disruption to the commercial real estate industry,” comments Rose. “John, Nick and Carl’s industry experience, deep market expertise and bespoke collaborative approach with clients perfectly align with Avison Young’s strategic direction and our desire to find differentiated solutions for our clients’ property and business challenges. All three will play leading roles in the execution of data management, analytics, visualization, client and business intelligence, technological-solution platforms and technology partnerships.”

Rose continues: “In this newly created role of CIO, John will be responsible for building strategy, enhancing processes and introducing products that position our clients effectively in the real estate market and drive our firm and its people to be more efficient and productive in their everyday efforts. Nick and Carl are also assuming new roles that cater to both our clients’ and advisors’ evolving businesses. Nick will focus on the exploration, assessment and implementation of innovative technological solutions to address opportunities across the commercial real estate industry. Carl will partner with our clients, transaction professionals, leadership team and researchers, as well as external service providers, to create a transformational data, analytics and advisory platform that guides the firm's clients and future clients around the globe. We’re confident that John, Nick and Carl will be tremendous advocates for our clients and outstanding resources for our people. We’re also confident that this new team will reshape not only the trajectory of our firm, but the entire industry.”

Sikaitis brings 17 years of commercial real estate experience to Avison Young. Reporting to Martin Dockrill, Avison Young Principal and COO, Global Operations, Sikaitis will sit on the firm’s global executive committee and help guide the company’s overall aggressive growth strategy and strategic direction.

“The addition of John, Nick and Carl demonstrates Avison Young’s commitment to advance our service offering in an ever-changing business environment,” notes Dockrill. “The new team has a proven track record of formulating ideas and executing on products and technologies that are intuitive to clients’ needs and express the voice of the real estate professional. We look forward to the new vision and offerings that the team will provide for our clients and company in the areas of data management, analytics, visualization, technological architecture, service delivery and go- to-market strategy. John, Nick and Carl’s diverse and complementary skill sets, youthful energy and inspiring passion will help drive innovation throughout our company and can be applied to every asset class and service line for years to come.”

“We are extremely excited to join Avison Young at this critical time of industry evolution and future disruption to help fast-forward our clients’ objectives and our real estate advisors’ productivity,” says Sikaitis. “We were attracted by Avison Young’s focus on always placing clients first and the firm’s ability to be deeply organized in its processes, smart and bold in its investment, and fast and nimble in its decision-making and service delivery. These factors provide the perfect foundation for our team and partners to experiment with ideas, processes and products that will redefine the commercial real estate industry’s landscape and composition.”

The hiring of Sikaitis, Guglietta and Caputo comes on the heels of the appointment of leading property markets analyst Nick Axford as a Principal of Avison Young and Global Director of Research on July 3, 2019.

Biographies

John Sikaitis

John Sikaitis brings 17 years of commercial real estate experience to Avison Young, most recently as managing director of research, advisory and business development for JLL in Washington, DC. During his 15-year tenure at JLL, he fuelled the firm’s research platform from its Washington, DC research model, growing headcount by more than 10 times and rolling out a go-to-market model in Washington, DC that doubled win rates across every major business line in the past four years. He also developed and ran one of the first successful local market-advisory businesses in the Americas, which has become an industry-wide model, with that group’s revenue growing 10 times in the past four years. Sikaitis sat on the firm’s Mid-Atlantic executive committee, helping to increase the company’s revenue regionally by more than three times since he joined the firm. While achieving all of those accomplishments, Sikaitis remained joined at the hip with clients, partnering with some of the largest institutional investors and corporate clients around investment strategy, due diligence, site selection, development feasibility and economic development advisory.

Over the past 15 years, Sikaitis has sat on teams advising investors on more than $10 billion in capital placement and occupiers and users on more than 12 million square feet of executed office leases. He is an associate board member with the Georgetown University Steers Center for Global Real Estate and sits on the executive committee of the board of the Golden Triangle Business Improvement District. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish with minors in Portuguese and business from Georgetown University.

Nick Guglietta

Nick Guglietta brings to Avison Young five years of commercial real estate industry experience with JLL in Washington, DC, where he steadily progressed in technology roles. Altogether, he has 11 years of professional experience developing software solutions for the real estate and financial services industries. During his tenure at JLL, he architected and led deployment of the Americas research team’s data platform, analytical product suite and proprietary 3D geospatial platform, covering more than 70 markets across North America and South America.

Prior to joining JLL, Guglietta worked as a project manager at SNL Financial, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, where he developed custom banking intelligence software and expanded financial-institution product lines internationally. He is active in the real estate industry as a retail investor and occupier, focused on community-building and small business development in Washington, DC. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in systems engineering from the University of Virginia.

Carl Caputo

Carl Caputo brings six years of commercial real estate experience to Avison Young, all with JLL in Washington, DC, where he helped build, expand and differentiate the local research platform by leveraging his deep market expertise and client understanding to direct the region’s data, analytics, advisory and technology strategies, initiatives and execution. During his time at JLL, he guided the strategic direction of the data and analytics platform, leading best-in-class data processes and products that meshed with both analytics and geospatial technology products. Caputo partnered with local clients and stakeholders to integrate these tools to foster more efficient and effective decision-making, helping to increase local brokerage revenue by 50% during his tenure.

Caputo and team were also instrumental in growing the region’s advisory practice for institutional investors, helping to double the revenue of that platform each year he was involved with it. Prior to joining JLL, he worked in equity research at KBW and in consulting at PwC, both in New York City. He is a member of the Young Real Estate Professionals and the Commercial Real Estate Brokers Association and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Middlebury College, where he was a member of the men’s basketball team.