Chris Borgese and Paulo Santos are joining Avison Young as vice presidents tasked with business development, the firm announced Thursday.
The pair, who have worked as a team for the past 10 years — most recently at JLL — will work out of the Morristown office.
Avison Young Principal and Managing Director Jeffrey Heller said the duo will have impact.
“Paulo and Chris have earned a stellar reputation for bringing commercial real estate solutions to the challenges confronting New Jersey’s leading employers, landlords and tenants,” Heller said. “As Avison Young continues to grow and expand its capacity for serving new and existing clients, Chris and Paulo will fuel a steady pipeline of client needs for New Jersey’s occupier, investor and specialty teams.”
Borgese and Santos worked together at Real Estate Strategies Corp. before joining JLL as a business development team in 2015. They have been instrumental in developing relationships for providing commercial real estate services to major brands, including Brother International Corp., Dassault Falcon Jet Corp., Hunter Douglas, International Flavors & Fragrances Inc., Schindler Elevator Corp. and Sharp Corp.
Borgese brings more than 15 years of sales and relationship management experience in the commercial real estate and financial services industries. In addition to JLL, he served as a relationship manager at Real Estate Strategies Corp., was vice president of sales at PATRINA Corp. and directed trading operations at Caliber Financial Management.
Santos’ background is in information technology, as he relies extensively on technology in his approach to business development. In addition to JLL, he brings more than two decades of experience working with database technologies, web development, programming and growing businesses. Paulo served as vice president of operations, technology and innovation while serving more than 12 years at Real Estate Strategies Corp.
“Chris and I take a yin-and-yang approach to business development,” Santos said. “He has a relationship-driven, people-first style that garners great results, while my focus is on the tech side, using artificial intelligence and data tools to do my business development.”
Borgese agreed.
“Our complementary styles enable us to cover a lot of ground,” he said. “Our sole focus is connecting business decision makers with the right resources to help them to achieve their real estate objectives. We are excited to quickly integrate and collaborate with the Avison Young team to make an immediate, positive and lasting impact.”
