Joseph R. Harbert - NYTimes.com Mr. Harbert, 66, is the president of the Eastern Region of Colliers International, a commercial real estate brokerage firm. Before joining Colliers last year, Mr. Harbert served as the chief operating officer for Cushman & Wakefield's tristate office and as vice chairman and general manager for CB Richard Ellis New York City. Q. It's been just over a year since you left Cushman & Wakefield to start this position. A. I left right before Memorial Day, took two days off, then I started working at Colliers. Q. That didn't give you too much time to rest. Q. Why did you leave Cushman? A. I thought this was a good opportunity. This is a really strong global brand, with not enough of a presence in New York City, and in a very tough market, as we all know. One of our priorities for the next five years - part of the strategic plan - is to do major-market strategies and New York is the major market. I like building. We got Cushman Wakefield back to No. 1 - I was there eight years. We were a strong No. 2 in the market - so the building there was pretty much done at that point and the next challenge was sitting out there. Q. Were you required to sign a no-compete clause before you left? A. Oh, sure. Executives and managers always have noncompete clauses; they're just part of your contract. It included nonsolicitation of company employees for a year and nonsolicitation of clients. You also can't reveal anything confidential about Cushman. Q. So you're past a year now. Will you be recruiting any people from there? A. Oh, I'm trying. I'm much more into building the people base rather than the client base, because if you have the right people they also have their own clients, and they will find new clients. Q. What is your strategy for expanding the company's presence in New York? A. The first thing you do is get to scale. If you're a 76-broker shop and you try to compete with a behemoth that has 187 or 246 brokers, you need to add brokers, and that's one thing that we're about to do. You also need to look at your service lines. Retail is going to be a growth area for us in Manhattan. It's one of the hottest retail markets in the world. We're actively recruiting retail brokers right now. And we'd like to have a multifamily presence. One of the other areas that we hope to grow in New York is investment sales. I think we'll add some resources there. Q. Do you do more leasing or sales right now? A. Oh, we do much more leasing than sales. It's probably about 90 percent of what we do. We do property management as well. Q. How is business right now? A. Here in New York we're generally between a $50 million and $60 million shop, gross revenues from commissions and fees, and we'd like to double in size. Last year we had 800 to 900 transactions total, and revenue-wise we're ahead of last year's pace. The average deal size in Manhattan is really about 10,000 square feet. We are pursuing large deals and we're competing against everybody else. Q. What was your largest deal so far this year? A. The Home Depot building on 23rd Street. We leased 220,000 square feet to AppNexus; that was the tenant. We were on the owner side of that deal. The rental rate was in the $50s. That was two months ago. Q. And your biggest deal careerwise? A. You have to look way back. I was part of the team that sold the Coliseum up on Columbus Circle. The biggest deals were with the M.T.A. I was a director of real estate for the transit authority and then I was the deputy director of real estate for the entire M.T.A. By the time I left we had a rent roll, which meant we were managing properties - $50 million a year. Q. Do you personally get involved in any of the Colliers deals? I get involved with the clients, because they want to know that the senior people in the firm are committed to them. So I'll go to client meetings. Q. Were you always interested in real estate? A. I got my Ph.D. in political science, which is not really the qualification one needs to be a real estate executive - although people would say there are politics involved. I had originally pursued a public sector career. I was a schoolteacher out of college; I taught third and fourth grade. I was the executive assistant in the division of special education. Then I moved on to the M.T.A., which is the accidental career. I came in the door as the director of real estate for the transit authority. Q. But you had no real estate experience. A. That's exactly what I said to them. They hired me because I was a pretty good manager. Q. Do you have aspirations for moving up at Colliers? A. This is really where I'd like to be. It's going to take a while to build this. I'm one year into a five-year program here. We're still in the ramp-up.