Avison Young adds Sheila Botting to launch professional services practice

Toronto-based commercial real estate services firm Avison Young has hired Sheila Botting, a real estate advisory expert and former partner at Deloitte, as principal and president of professional services, Americas. Based in Toronto, Botting will build out the new practice’s integrated services offerings.

Avison Young was founded in 1978, and provides investment sales, leasing, management, financing, and advisory services to clients in the office, retail, industrial, multi-family, and hospitality sectors. The principal-owned firm has 5,000 employees in 108 offices in 14 countries.

"In building our professional services and consultancy leadership throughout the Americas, we are delivering an interdisciplinary service offering closely aligned with our transaction teams and our investments in technology and innovation that is unique in our industry," Mark Rose, chair and CEO of Avison Young, said.

Botting will harness the firm’s technology and innovation platforms when building the professional services practice. The practice will allow for more integrated partnerships to help Avison Young’s professionals advise on strategy, implementation, and management – complementing the firm’s real estate brokers.

In the new role, Botting will set the strategy of the practice in the Americas, and build out a team which provides an end-to-end professional services offering related to property. The offerings will include: Corporate real estate advisory; Workplace Strategy; Project Management; Transaction Management; Real Estate & Infrastructure Advisory; and Urban Land Planning & Development Advisory.

"The entire market – including investors, owners, occupiers, developers and other participants – want insights into cities, people, and workplaces across property types to help address their business strategies," said Botting. "Our goal with professional services at Avison Young is to spark provocative discussions and solutions about how to use real estate as a tool to achieve business goals."

Botting has 25 years of real estate advisory experience, delivering consulting work to corporations, real estate firms, investors, governments, and others. She was previously a senior partner and Canadian real estate leader at Deloitte, where she spent nine years and served on the global real estate executive team. Prior to that, Botting was an executive managing director at Cushman & Wakefield and an executive vice president at Royal LePage Commercial.

She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Victoria, a master’s degree from the University of Waterloo, and completed the corporate finance executive program at Harvard Business School. Botting is also a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Management Consultants.