New York People and Company News, Week of July 10, 2026

• MetLife Investment Management, the institutional asset management business of MetLife, Inc., announced that Chris Aiken has been appointed head of Real Estate Equity Strategies. Aiken will lead MIM’s direct property investment platform and oversee investing activities on behalf of MetLife’s general account and third-party institutional investors across core, core-plus, build-to-core, value-add and opportunistic strategies. 

• Newmark Group, Inc. has hired Munish Viralam as Executive Vice Chairman to lead its Real Estate Strategy & Consulting Group. The practice will work alongside Newmark’s advisors to support clients navigating commercial real estate transactions and strategic decisions, including financial analysis, market assessments, operational considerations, lease negotiations and structuring. Based in New York, Viralam leads the group that combines Newmark’s New York Consulting and Financial Services teams. 

• Tyler Caron has joined the Colliers New York Capital Markets team as an associate. Based in New York City, Caron further supports the continued growth of Colliers’ New York office and expands the firm’s capital markets capabilities throughout the region. 

• Cushman & Wakefield announced that Dr. Benjamin Westrich, PhD, has joined the firm as Head of Forecasting. In this role, Westrich will lead the development of the firm’s forecasting capabilities across the Americas, overseeing models, methodologies and systems that support economic outlooks and predictive analytics. 

• PREMIER Design + Build Group has appointed Paul Moser as SVP, Eastern Region. Moser will directly oversee the company’s project portfolio across New Jersey and Pennsylvania, operating out of the firm’s Morristown, nj office. Moser brings more than a decade’s worth of development and construction expertise to PREMIER, having delivered in excess of 6 million square feet of industrial developments and complex redevelopments throughout the region. 

• RIPCO Real Estate appointed Jennifer Sofia Harrison as Managing Director. Based in the firm’s new Red Bank, NJ office, Harrison will focus on expanding RIPCO’s landlord representation platform throughout Monmouth County and Central New Jersey, while leveraging her extensive retail, development, and brokerage experience to support clients across the region. 

• The Feil Organization, a premier national real estate investment firm, today announced that Samantha Perlman will join the firm as Associate Director of Commercial Leasing. She will amplify leasing efforts for the firm’s New York City office portfolio. Before joining Feil, Perlman was a Senior Associate in Cushman & Wakefield’s NYC office, where she played an important role in leasing 18 Manhattan properties totaling five million square feet. 

• Metropolitan Commercial Bank appointed Jason Bishop as Group Head of Commercial Real Estate Lending. In his new role, Bishop will lead MCB’s Commercial Real Estate Lending division, overseeing business development, portfolio growth, and strategic lending initiatives. 

• Nuveen, a global investment manager, has closed Nuveen Real Estate Exchange I DST (NREX I), a $58.7-million Delaware Statutory Trust (DST) that provides investors the opportunity to exchange appreciated real estate holdings for a tax- deferred interest in a portfolio of institutional-quality properties, sponsored by The DST includes three recently built, Class A, light industrial buildings strategically located in two Minneapolis submarkets and is fully leased to five tenants for a weighted average lease term of approximately four years. 

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