Movers: Kidder Mathews Gets New Head of Northern California

Commercial brokerage Kidder Mathews announced that David Nelson was selected to oversee its Northern California and Nevada operations.

Nelson will act as the regional president of the brokerage and will be in charge of offices in San Francisco, Redwood Shores, Silicon Valley, Pleasanton, Sacramento and Reno. Before joining Kidder Mathews, Nelson served as regional manager for Calabasas-based Marcus & Milichap’s San Francisco, East Bay and North Bay markets from 2016 to 2022.

Nelson had his first stint at Marcus & Millichap from 2005 to 2010, when he worked as a commercial investment broker and produced more than $100 million in sales volume. After leaving M&M, he spent the next six years starting commercial divisions at two investment firms. He returned to Marcus & Millchap in 2016.

Seattle-based Kidder brands itself as the largest independently owned brokerage on the West Coast, with 20 different offices in five states. The brokerage completed $1.21 billion in leasing and sales activity in 2021, making it the seventh-largest brokerage in the Bay Area.

➤ CBRE Group announced the hire of James Bennett as vice chairman at its Palo Alto office. Bennett will join CBRE’s life science team overseeing the Bay Area market. He brings 30 years of experience working with the life science sector on the West Coast.

Before joining CBRE, Bennett was a managing partner at CBRE for 23 years where he was involved in major tenant and landlord assignments throughout the West Coast, including the Bay Area. Bennett has represented a range of tenants including large pharmaceutical corporations,, large and mid-cap publicly traded biotech companies and early-stage venture-backed firms. Also, he has represented investors and developers, ranging from institutional REITs and multinational investment firms to local building owners.

➤ Newmark has welcomed Justin Grilli as the new senior managing director of the Walnut Creek office. Grilli will be responsible for representing developers, investors and tenants on leasing and capital markets transactions as well as for portfolio management.

Before joining Newmark, Grillie was senior managing director at Cushman & Wakefield. During his career, he has brokered more than 600 lease and sale transactions on more than 4 million square feet of real estate, valued at more than $1 billion.

➤ Howard Berry has joined Avison Young as principal and will partner with the firm’s existing data center real estate team to strengthen, develop and advise on sales, leasing, investment and development of data center properties.

From 2012 to 2022, Berry was vice president at Colliers’ Silicon Valley office.

➤ Kyle Hipple was hired as the new vice president in Colliers’ San Francisco office. Hipple started his career as a research coordinator for Kidder Mathews in 2015. He was promoted to associate vice president two years later and was in that position until he accepted the job at Colliers.