Cushman & Wakefield named Aubrey Waddell as the new head of its Global Occupier Services division.

Waddell was promoted to CEO of the department, where she was previously global head of commercial operations. She replaces Bill Knightly, who had led the division since June 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“I’m excited to lead an exceptional team wholly focused on positioning our firm and clients for long-term, sustainable growth,” Waddell said in a statement.

Waddell has been at Cushman & Wakefield’s Atlanta office since 2021 after joining the firm from JLL. She has been leading a team focused on commercial negotiation, solution architecture, transition management, proposals and pricing.

Prior to joining the brokerage firm, Waddell spent more than 11 years at JLL, where she oversaw commercial strategy for the firm’s largest enterprise occupier clients and served as general counsel for JLL’s Workplace Dynamics business in the Americas.

A Cushman & Wakefield representative declined to say whether Knightly would remain at the company, but a statement from Andrew McDonald, the firm’s global president and chief operations officer, implies he’s exiting the firm.

“We are incredibly grateful for the contributions Bill made in multiple roles over the past nine years, and wish him well in his future endeavors,” McDonald said.

Knightly was based at Cushman & Wakefield's Chicago headquarters and started working at the firm in 2017. He came over via its merger with London-based DTZ in 2015 and had served as an executive vice president of investor relations and the chief operating officer of Global Occupier Services before rising to CEO of the department.

Cushman & Wakefield’s Global Occupier Services department includes property and portfolio management operations, transaction management for leases and acquisitions, and advisory services for clients’ business development and space planning,

The firm posted $6.9B in revenue and $4.7B in service line fee revenue for the nine months ending in September, down 7% and 12%, respectively, from the same period a year prior. Its property, facilities and project management divisions grew by 3% over that period, while all other verticals saw revenue shrink.

Cushman & Wakefield, along with its peers in the market, has been working to cut costs amid a slowdown in the commercial real estate sector in 2023. CEO Michelle MacKay announced $40M in budget cuts on its third-quarter earnings call in August to complement $90M in cuts announced earlier last year.