North America Real Estate Lead and Global Retail Lead

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We are looking to hire an North America Real Estate Lead and Global Retail Lead (New Jersey, USA)

The North America Real Estate Lead and Global Retail Lead will be responsible to manage our regional real estate portfolio for Supply Chain and Retail (incl. M&A) for Unilever globally. This role is part of the Global Workplace team and would report into the Global Workplace Director. It is a senior role in Unilever, where this role would be instrumental in enabling us to respond to changing business needs, minimising the costs and taking opportunities to maximize value while balancing risks. We are looking for a team player with leadership qualities of owner’s mindset, who is self-driven, and who is excited by new challenges.

Scope:

• Retail and M&A real estate portfolio: Global, across Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific.

• Supply Chain: North America (USA and Canada).

• Owned, leased and 3P managed sites are within the scope of this role.

• Transactions could include acquisitions (buy, lease), divestments (sale, lease exits), and other portfolio related activities (such as, renewals, rental etc.).

• Role is supported by an established 3P global supplier though transactions may be delivered without the 3P support.

• Requires so

Some of the key areas of focus include:

• Drive real estate transactions end-to-end from portfolio review to transactions delivery.

• To drive Global real estate strategy and implement agreed plans that ensure the real estate portfolio supports our current business agenda, aligning with global and local policies and guidelines including but not limited to hybrid working, Future of the Office, Global Logistics strategy.

• Deliver transaction management service to business through leading and managing 3rd party RE Service Providers for all property types (office, warehouse, manufacturing, R&D, retail, as relevant) within the geographies.

• Maintain and keep current our critical property data in our platform through working with outsourced RE and other providers (e.g., market values, terms of leases, number of people, square meters, costs to run, etc.). 

• Develop KPIs that enable benchmarking with other companies, across Unilever and within local markets to identify opportunities for value creation, taking opportunities for quick win returns where available.

• Work in partnership with broader Workplace team to deliver full suite of workplace services (PM, Space Planning, FM, etc).

• Lead outsourced 3rd party provider to provide and support Strategic Portfolio Planning services for applicable geographies/portfolio and work closely with global Workplace Design & Experience team to ensure strategies are aligned locally and globally.

• Act as a change agent with key stakeholders to drive real estate principles and policies.

 Responsibilities include:

• Understand business units’ space demands and real estate market trends and provide thought leadership in strategy sessions with business units to drive the best solutions considering all relevant occupancy scenarios.

• Proactively manage occupancy costs by understanding business units’ demands, market trends and space planning requirements to implement the best occupancy strategies and commercial options for the business (including sale/lease backs, adjustments of rent to market, etc.).

• Provide plans that optimize space for the new hybrid ways of working to drive employee experience.

• Provide timely and accurate market data updates and forecasts of occupancies, rental rates and operating expenses.

• Prepare int