New York People and Company News, Week of June 12, 2026

Melissa Strickland, NCIDQ, has joined JLL as SVP and New Jersey Workplace Strategy Lead. Based full-time in the firm’s Parsippany office, Strickland will advise clients on workplace strategy, change management, space programming and planning, and design for large, complex projects throughout the state.

Cresa announced that Robert Gutman has joined as a Managing Principal to lead structured finance for its national Data Center Capital Markets & Advisory platform. In this role he will be responsible for raising and deploying equity, asset and corporate level financing, and construction and long-term debt, while also providing investor relations consulting. He will be based in the firm’s New York City office.

The CRE Finance Council (CREFC) has selected Toby Cobb, Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner of 3650 Capital, as Chair of the CREFC Executive Committee and the Board of Governors for 2026-2027 at its Annual Conference in New York City. A commercial real estate finance industry veteran with more than 30 years of experience, Mr. Cobb succeeds outgoing Chair Leland F. Bunch III, Managing Director and Head of Capital Markets and Banking for Bank of America’s U.S. Real Estate Structured Finance Group.

Cliffwater, a leading private markets interval fund manager, appointed Sean Brenan as Head of Real Estate and Portfolio Manager of Cascade Real Assets Fund. In this new position, Brenan will focus on managing Cliffwater’s opportunities across real estate, infrastructure, and other real assets sectors. Previously, he served as the Global Head of Goldman Sachs’ real estate secondaries, primaries and co-investment platform.

ACORE CAPITAL, a leading U.S. commercial real estate debt investment manager, appointed Cynthia Holahan to the newly created role of chief marketing officer. She will lead ACORE CAPITAL’s global marketing strategy, brand positioning, investor communications and business development marketing. Holahan joins ACORE CAPITAL with more than 20 years of marketing and communications experience.

PREMIER Design + Build Group has promoted Artie Trautmann to General Superintendent, based in Morristown, NJ. hE will oversee field operations and project execution throughout PREMIER’s Northeast division.

Rosenberg & Estis, P.C., a real estate and commercial litigation law firm, has promoted eight attorneys across the firm’s litigation, transactional, and administrative law practices. The firm promoted Ariel Bresky, Matthew Eiben, Joseph Kammerman, and David Rosenberg to Income Member, and David Goldfischer, Matthew LoBello, John Muldoon, and Sophie Wang to Counsel.

Mancini Duffy, a national architecture and design firm , has filled two new leadership roles within its research and development arm, the Design Lab. Eric Hull has been named AI Integration Lead, while Jeff Anderson has been appointed Immersive Technologies Lead.

Distinguished Programs, a national MGA and insurance program manager, thas expanded into the reinsurance market with the addition of Distinguished Reinsurance. The new platform debuts with its first group focused on property reinsurance, led by Frank DiPaola, who will take on the role of President, DistinguishedRe Property.

Findigs, an AI-native leasing decisioning platform designed to help residential operators across the U.S. improve revenue and grow their bottom line, closed a $32-million Series C funding round led by Marc Weiser of RPM Ventures, with participation from existing investors Nyca Partners, Frontier Venture Capital and Western Technology Investment. The round brings Findigs’ total funding to date to $80 million.

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