Susan Machtiger is Executive Chairman of Newmark Consulting (nmrk.com), where she advises C-suite leaders on strategies that align business, brand, people, and purpose to drive growth, transformation, and measurable enterprise value.
She began her career in M&A at Morgan Stanley and later held senior strategy roles at JWT, Y&R, and Landor. Susan went on to co-found Ogilvy Consulting North America, serving as President and growing the business from a startup into a $60 million operation.
Drawing on more than 25 years of experience, her expertise spans business and brand strategy, corporate purpose, organizational transformation, AI, innovation, and sustainability. She has advised clients ranging from startups to global enterprises, including Ford, Coca-Cola, American Express, Google, Enterprise, and UBS.
Susan has served on both public and private boards and holds a B.S.E. in chemical engineering from Princeton, an MBA from Columbia, and a certificate in Sustainable Business Strategy from Harvard Business School.
A Non-Linear Path To Strategy
Susan’s path to real estate and consulting wasn’t linear. “That’s actually the point,” she says. “I started my career on Wall Street as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley, with a chemical engineering degree from Princeton – training that taught me to think in systems and structures.”
After earning her MBA from Columbia, where she focused equally on marketing and finance, Susan spent three decades on the strategy and brand side at WPP – at Y&R, JWT, and Landor, and ultimately as one of the founders and President of Ogilvy Consulting. There, she helped some of the world’s largest companies navigate transformation and led the consultancy over 15 years, during which it was named one of the top global management consultancies by Forbes.
Susan’s work is a culmination of her expertise across many strategic disciplines – business, brand, people, and more. Her certification in Sustainable Business Strategy, as well as her team’s expertise in Behavioral Science and Employee Identification through EMBER, ensures that she brings the most modern, relevant approaches to her work.
Real estate entered the picture more recently, as Susan came to see how central ‘place’ has become to enterprise strategy – how a company’s spaces and its workforce now sit at the same table as brand and business strategy in the decisions that shape growth.
“Indeed, the two largest items on any company’s balance sheet are people costs and place costs,” she observes. “So it’s critical that real estate should power a company’s business strategy, and not just be viewed as a transaction. Newmark Consulting was the natural next chapter of that thinking.”
The Vision Behind Newmark Consulting
Susan recalls that she was drawn to Newmark because real estate and people decisions have become genuinely strategic, not just operational – and that shift creates both an opportunity and an imperative for how consulting gets done. She saw that Newmark’s leadership were visionary thinkers who could see around corners and anticipate the need for a CRE leader to bring strategic intelligence to the table.
She’s now working in close partnership with Dr. Yasmeen Coning, Executive Vice Chairman, to expand Newmark Consulting’s reach into business strategy, people, purpose, place, and brand, bringing those disciplines together rather than treating them as separate workstreams.
“The vision is to build something genuinely new in the industry: an integrated practice that helps C-suite leaders address the increasingly interconnected pressures on their organizations as one agenda, not five disconnected ones,” she explains.
Susan recalls two experiences that most influenced her leadership style and approach to business. Early in her career, she worked under very autocratic, command-and-control leaders. That experience told her clearly who she did not want to become.
When she was elected to her local school board in Westchester County just weeks before September 11th, leading a community through that trauma taught her that leadership is tested not just by what you decide, but by how you show up for people while deciding it. “Both experiences pushed me toward a style built on transparency and earning trust rather than commanding it,” she reflects.
“These forces – business, people, purpose, place, and brand – are increasingly interconnected, and addressing them as one enterprise agenda is how we help leaders turn complexity into meaningful, measurable business value.”
Driving Strategy & Impact At Newmark Consulting
As Executive Chairman of Newmark Consulting, Susan’s priority is delivering its differentiated C-suite advisory model to clients – one they increasingly value, and that has been notably missing in the market. “We’ve brought together some of the best and brightest thinkers across business, brand, and people strategy to deliver it,” she says.
Susan is also focused on scaling the business – expanding its reach and establishing a broader role for the group in the decisions shaping the future of its clients’ enterprises. Concretely, that means working alongside Dr. Yasmeen Coning to knit business strategy, people, purpose, place, and brand into a single, coherent offering, while ensuring the team brings the most senior, experienced talent in the industry to bear on clients’ hardest problems. “We’re actively working with important clients every day on their toughest challenges,” she affirms.
In terms of influencing the real estate and broader business landscape and contributing to global impact, Susan observes that there has never been a more challenging time to lead an organization, with companies navigating market disruption, shifting customer expectations, workforce transformation, and the rapid emergence of AI, all while confronting fundamental questions about who they are and where they’re going as a company.
“My work is about helping leaders turn that complexity into measurable business value by building a truly integrated consulting offering across business strategy, leadership, people, purpose, place, and brand. When we get that right at scale, it changes how the industry – and the enterprises we serve – think about these new drivers of business performance,” she clarifies.
“There has never been a more challenging time to lead an organization. Companies are simultaneously navigating market disruption, changing customer expectations, workforce transformation, and the rapid emergence of AI – while confronting fundamental questions about who they are, where they are going, and how they will get there.”
Beyond The Traditional Advisory Model
For Susan, what sets Newmark Consulting apart in the global real estate sector is refusing to treat these disciplines as silos. She’s focused on building an integrated approach that connects leadership priorities with the people, places, experiences, and behaviors that ultimately drive enterprise value – addressing business strategy, AI adoption, workforce transformation, organizational performance, and brand strategy as one connected agenda, rather than a series of separate engagements.
“That’s a meaningfully different model from traditional strategic advisory, especially in real estate, and it reflects Newmark’s broader investment in expanding beyond transactional services. Ultimately, people inside of place are any company’s biggest growth accelerant,” she insists.
Susan adds that their team is also highly senior and deeply experienced working with CEO’s C-Suite and Boards. “This helps accelerate our influence and thus our impact. Our Behavioral Science Lab and EMBER, our proprietary workforce data set, bring deep people insights to our work that give us an unfair advantage,” she reveals.
In terms of embracing future trends in real estate and consulting, Susan predicts that the forces they’re already navigating – AI, workforce transformation, and market disruption – will become even more interconnected with real estate and workplace strategy, not less.
“It’s critical that all we do ladders up to a clear business ambition that’s unique to that company and CEO. When everything is not aligned in supporting the CEO/ELT vision is when companies get in trouble. Companies will increasingly need partners who can address these as one enterprise agenda rather than compartmentalized issues. We’re preparing by building exactly that kind of integrated capability now, so we’re ahead of the curve rather than reacting to it,” she shares.
“Leadership isn’t something a title gives you – it’s something you earn by motivating people to want to build something together with you.”
Leading Through Crisis And Change
Recalling the challenges that tested her most, Susan feels that leading through September 11th as a newly elected school board member tested her in ways nothing has since. “It was a test not only of what actions you took, but how you took them,” she reflects. More recently, she notes that leading teams through the pandemic tested a different kind of resilience: respecting that everyone copes differently, supporting people one at a time, and rebuilding a sense of shared purpose once they could come together again.
In both cases, the answer was the same – lean on transparency, and trust the team to carry each other. And most importantly, being there for clients that had serious supply and demand market challenges. “Importantly, we also created platforms in partnership with Capital One and others to support communities in times of need, such as small businesses that were severely affected by the pandemic (#SmallUnites),” she shares.
Susan doesn’t believe that balance should look “perfect and packaged.” “I’d rather be human and real, because I think that’s what actually builds trust with a team. I’m not shy about working very hard, rolling up my sleeves, and practicing servant leadership,” she states. “Practically, that means sharing leadership rather than carrying everything myself, and being deliberate about making time with my team and my family. I have two grown children who keep me grounded – it’s what matters most.”
“I’d rather be human and real than perfect and packaged – that’s what actually inspires trust.”
Building Something From The Ground Up
In terms of her career achievements, Susan recalls two milestones. The first was helping grow Ogilvy Consulting from its founding into one of the world’s leading consulting units – a 50-fold expansion over 15 years. “It showed me what’s possible when you build something from the ground up with the right team,” she notes.
She also sees it as a great privilege and accomplishment, having worked with many Fortune 500 companies and startups, creating strategies that drive their success. “Working side by side with some of the most talented client leaders has been an amazing partnership, with many of our closest clients continuing to work with us even as they change jobs and companies,” she shares.
Finally, Susan shares another achievement – publishing “Brands That Do,” which won the WPP Atticus Award and was translated into Mandarin. “It was a milestone because it wasn’t just recognition – it changed how organizations think about building purposeful brands in today’s world, which is exactly the kind of practical, adoptable thinking I try to bring to every engagement,” she states. Susan’s thought leadership has impacted the industry, from Purpose 2.0 for Cannes Lion Intelligence to webcasts on Legacy Brands to The Future of Mobility and Cities to Branding AI companies and many others.
A Legacy Of Connected Thinking
Susan’s commitment to incorporating sustainability and ethical responsibility into her consulting strategies is built into how she thinks about brand and business strategy, not treated as a separate initiative. That same lens carries into how she advises clients at Newmark Consulting. She insists that sustainability and responsible growth aren’t add-ons to enterprise strategy; they’re part of it.
“I completed a certificate in Sustainable Business Strategy through Harvard Business School, hosted a panel at WPP Beach during Cannes Lions on using creativity to tackle climate change, and have made building real DEI practice – not just policy – a personal priority throughout my career (LinkedIn; Brand Innovators),” she shares.
Susan hopes to be remembered for proving that consulting in real estate can be genuinely integrated, that real estate is a foundation for large-scale business growth, and that strategy, people, purpose, place, and brand don’t have to be handled by five different advisors speaking five different languages. “If Newmark Consulting becomes the model other firms measure themselves against for that kind of connected thinking, that’s the legacy that matters to me,” she affirms.
Finally, she shares some words of wisdom for aspiring leaders who want to make a lasting impact in strategic consulting in the real estate industry: Always start with clients and the issues facing them, not with the deal or the transaction. If you can help them advance their business strategy and impact in their markets by aligning everything they do to support that, the deals naturally follow. Always be curious about their businesses and help them think future back, not a few months out.
Conclusion
Susan Machtiger’s career is a testament to the power of connected thinking – from investment banking at Morgan Stanley to three decades shaping strategy and brand at WPP, and now as Executive Chairman of Newmark Consulting. Her vision is clear – real estate, people, purpose, and brand belong at the same table as business strategy, not in separate silos. By building that integrated model, she’s changing not just how the industry consults, but how enterprises grow.
