People & Companies News for Week Ending June 6, 2025

News| June 5, 2025| Monte Stewart

• JLL has launched its 2025 campaign with Breakfast Club of Canada and reached a fundraising milestone to support school breakfast programs across Canada. JLL and Breakfast Club are celebrating the 10th anniversary of their partnership.

• Howard Sokolowski, founder and president of Metropia, has received a BILD lifetime achievement award. The honour “celebrates individuals who have dedicated their careers to advancing the development industry, demonstrating visionary leadership, unwavering integrity, and a commitment to the greater good.” Sokolowski has served the industry for three decades. He also co-founded and headed Tribute Communities.

• Gigi Wong has been appointed CFO at Atrium Mortgage Investment Corporation. She served as CFO at Hazelview Investments between 2016 and February 2025.

• Great Gulf has captured three BILD awards. The company was named Home Builder of the Year, Green Builder of the Year and Project of the Year, all in the low-rise category. Oakrise, Upper Joshua Creek, located in Oakville, Ont., was the winning project. Great Gulf is partnering on it with Arista Homes. The awards come as Great Gulf is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

• JLL has appointed Scott Barras to oversee business operations and drive growth as the firm’s Work Dynamics group lead. Barras will help clients primarily based and operating in Canada drive maximum value from their real estate portfolios. He has 18 years of experience in corporate real estate and has focused recently on with a recent focus on workplace strategy, portfolio transformation and project management across Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.

• Clark Wilson has promoted Pavneet Grewal to associate with in the law firm’s real estate group. The promotion comes after she completed her commitments as an articling student. Her practice encompasses a wide range of commercial real estate and corporate legal matters, including residential, retail, office, industrial, hotel, and mixed-use development.

• Jamie Read has been promoted to vice-president of people and culture at Townline Homes. She previous served as director of people and culture.

• Gavin Swartzman will join Christie’s International Real Estate as the firm’s new president and CEO in June. Swartzman spent the past 11 years as CEO of Peerage Realty Partners, a leading Toronto-based holdings company that owns and operates brokerage firms in Canada and the U.S. Peerage’s companies include Christie’s affiliates.

• Phil Brown has joined XXIII Capital as chief operating officer. Brown brings about two decades of Canadian and U.S. commercial real estate industry experience to the firm.

• Decisive Dividend Corporation has appointed Chris Goodchild as chief operating officer. Goodchild moved to the company from Magna International, where he most recently served as general manager. Decisive Dividend focuses on acquisitions of manufacturing companies and their real estate assets.

• Iain Stewart will retire from his position as president and CEO of Genesis Land Development on June 30. He will be succeeded by Parveshindera Sidhu. Stewart was appointed president and CEO in 2018. He joined the Calgary-based company’s board in 2013 and will continue to sit on it. Sidhu has been with Genesis since 2005, taking on increasingly senior roles. He most recently served as president and chief operating officer.

• John Bosco-Agbasi has been appointed as Fengate Real Estate’s managing director. He will oversee Toronto-based Fengate’s commercial and residential property portfolios. Bosco-Agbasi moved to Fengate from Carttera, where he served as director of asset management.

• Gautam Kumar has joined Colliers as the firm’s vice-president of debt advisory in Edmonton. Kumar has about 15 years of commercial real estate financing experience.

• RBC Capital Markets has promoted Yasmin Nassar to managing director and COO of global research. She has been with the company for two decades.

• Amanda Feduc has been named managing director of Colliers’ North York district office in Toronto. She has returned to the company, where she began her commercial real estate career in 2011 before moving to CBRE. In her latest role at CBRE, she served as managing director for Southern Ontario.

• Altus Group has elevated Heather Globush to associate director. She has served as a senior project manager for the past three years.

• Evan French has joined Marcon as director of development after three years at Wesgroup, where he was a senior development manager. Before joining Wesgroup, he was a planner with Sherman Brown.

• Realstar has appointed Randy Hoffman as its new CEO. Hoffman moved to Realstar from Oxford Properties, where he most recently served as the head of the company’s U.S. business. He spent about two decades at Oxford, starting as an investment analyst and advancing to increasingly senior executive positions. Realstar invest in multi-residential, hospitality and alternative assets.

• Avison Young Principal Jeff Flemington has raised more than $63,000, exceeding his original goal, in a cycling fundraiser for the Canadian Cancer Society. He is cycling more than 4,000 kilometres across the largely unpaved Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) in support of the Canadian Cancer Society. The five-week solo journey, dubbed Project 55 in honour of Flemington’s age, continue until July 3, covering 4,340 kilometres between New Mexico and Alberta—90% of which is unpaved. The effort pays tribute to Flemington’s colleagues, Sarah Campbell and Kiana Kasaei, and their personal battles with cancer. His initial goal was to raise $55,000 to support research into brain cancer and breast cancer, the respective diagnoses that have affected Kasaei and Campbell. The fundraising project has secured a 50% matching program through Toronto’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute. People wishing to contribute funds can donate through the Project 55 website.

• Anthem Properties has promoted Jacqueline Lau to marketing director. She served as the company’s senior marketing manager for the past six years. In another move, Anthem promoted Charmaine Liang to senior manager of investment. She previously served an investment manager and real estate acquisitions analyst with the firm.

• Hyvve Canada has appointed Saira Somani as the company’s fractional CFO. She previously served as director of finance and controller at Kenota Health. Before moving to Kenota, she spent about a decade with TD in assistant vice-president and senior manager roles.

• Heather Murphy has joined Kingsett Capital as director of real estate asset management. She moved to Kingsett from the Investment Management Corporation of Ontario, where she held analyst positions.

• Starlight Investments will serve as the presenting sponsor for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation’s Journey to Conquer Cancer for the fourth consecutive year. The event, scheduled for Sunday, June 15 at Varsity Stadium in Toronto, invites participants to walk or run distances of 1 km, 3 km, or 5 km to raise funds for cancer research at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Starlight has been a dedicated partner of this initiative for over a decade, contributing more than $250,000 through employee participation, fundraising, and sponsorships.

• Unceded: Voices of the Land, a groundbreaking Indigenous-led contemporary architecture exhibition, will be showcased at Edmonton City Centre until June 21. Originally created for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, Unceded is the first exhibition of its kind to be presented on the world stage, celebrating Indigenous architecture through the perspectives of 18 Indigenous architects and designers from across North America. More details are available at Unceded.org.