Ed Forst will start his new job as president and CEO of Cushman & Wakefield on Jan. 6. Most people join a gym in January, but traveling among the company’s 250 offices in 60 countries could also satisfy the popular New Year's resolution to exercise more.

Operations experience trumped lack of extensive real estate exposure on Ed's resume, C&W chairman and EMEA CEO Carlo Barel di Sant'Albano (above) told us yesterday. C&W wasn't in a rush to fill the shoes Glenn Rufrano vacated six months ago, as Carlo (chairman and CEO of EMEA) is a qualified interim administrator, affording the company time to search for the right candidate. Real estate experience was not at the top of the list of priorities, Carlo says. What C&W parent company Exor got is a performance-oriented CEO with an operations track record (principal operating officer of Harvard for a year) and an understanding of global service organization challenges (10 years as global co-head of Goldman Sachs' investment management division), as well as an engaging, charismatic leader for the company's more than 16,000 employees.

Carlo also tells us Exor played a key role on the search committee (via Carlo), and so Ed's outlook aligns with the parent company's long-term plans. Ed (above) was at Goldman Sachs at the same time as Exor COO Shahriar Tadjbakhsh, but Carlo says they worked in different areas. Rather, Ed's reputation preceded him to C&W. He'll be based in the company's world HQ at 1290 Ave of the Americas, just six blocks south of Carnegie Hall, where he'd been an advisor to Fenway Partners since his time at Harvard. Also in his background: Ed's work at Harvard, in '08 and '09, overlapped with his service as an advisor to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.