Ben Fujihara has decades of experience finding and recruiting executives in the financial services realm. Now, the executive is applying that background to commercial real estate, with plans to help national firm Mohr Partners more than double its U.S. brokerage headcount over the next five years.

Fujihara joined Dallas-based Mohr Partners this month as director of talent acquisition as companies grapple with their corporate office portfolios, some of which have been upended by the pandemic. At the same time, Mohr Partners is bulking up its team as part of a long-term growth plan betting on the future of office space.

Most recently, Fujihara served as vice president of enterprise sales at Fischer Solutions, a Dallas-based national corporate real estate advisory firm. In that role, he streamlined business operations and boosted revenue by hiring, coaching and leading a team of sales executives. Prior to Fischer, he spent more than two decades at Morgan Stanley, where he acted as an executive leader with financial responsibility for the North Texas region, where he oversaw more than 435 employees spanning 14 offices.

Hiring Fujihara comes as Mohr Partners has focused on building up its talent pool to focus on that long-term strategy. That includes the promotion of Ruth Baker to director of strategy and growth earlier this year as part of a team focused on helping the firm's clients drive cost savings in their real estate portfolios. Last year, the brokerage firm promoted Sohail Hamirani to chief financial officer, and he put in place financial controls to help the firm remain profitable in the pandemic.

Mohr Partners Chairman and CEO Bob Shibuya said Fujihara's track record of recruiting over 100 brokers at Morgan Stanley has prepared him for this new role with the brokerage firm.

There are a lot of similarities between financial and private wealth advisers and commercial real estate brokers, Fujihara said, with both of those professions attracting individual entrepreneurs with "a great pulse of what's going on in the capital markets" and "experts in their respective fields," even if the vernacular is a little different.

"Both professions are impacted by the macro- and microeconomic trends in various markets," said Fujihara, who will be based in Dallas. "We are helping landlords and occupiers on their ... continued transition to flexible inventory as they focus on what the environment might look like and the occupancy levels of their real estate. This economy creates opportunities for companies to consider their real estate portfolio, what type of flexibility to offer and where the workforce is going."

Fujihara, who was born in California but grew up in Texas, enlisted in the U.S. Navy after high school to get funding for college. He attended Texas A&M University before finishing his bachelor's degree in organizational leadership at Pennsylvania State University and embarking on a career in finance. He also participated in the executive leadership development program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Thayer Leadership Development Group at the U.S. Military Academy.

At his new firm, Fujihara said brokers are seeing a flight to higher-quality real estate, with executives seeking the best amenities in the best locations. Other macroeconomic trends are still playing out that could also affect these decisions, he said. Each company the brokerage works with will come to a different conclusion with the help of a broker in how they deal with shifting work needs in the pandemic, he said. That's helping to drive the need for Mohr Partners to deepen its bench in some key U.S. markets while also entering new ones.

"It's a two-prong approach," he said. "We want to continue to expand in our existing markets, with us being in 21 major U.S. markets. We see a tremendous opportunity to expand with experienced brokers in existing markets. We also want to look at expanding in markets [where] we do not currently have a footprint."

Mohr Partners has 60 to 70 brokers throughout the United States, he said, with plans to expand that team to more than 150 over the next five years. Those real estate executives could range from junior-level associates to seasoned veterans, bringing on larger teams and one-off hires in some cases, he said.

The firm is expected to expand in markets across the country, with plans to add to its bench in key Texas markets, including Dallas, Austin and Houston, while entering a new market such as San Antonio in the future. Outside Texas, he said he anticipates adding to the current West Coast offices while entering cities such as San Diego, where the firm doesn't have a presence but there's a big business hub. There are other opportunities to add more brokers in the Northeast as well as the Midwest.

But hiring top talent isn't easy, with real estate brokers — like financial advisers — having a core value of being successful no matter what umbrella you put them under, Fujihara said, adding this is where Mohr Partners comes in to help them expand their business at "an above average pace" and provide some internal opportunities to develop their teams.

"We offer flexibility and nimbleness," he said, adding new brokers will benefit from the flat leadership team at the top supporting the entrepreneurial brokers. "We are a good-size company, but it's not large enough to have a bureaucracy. We also have an established history as a company. Those are some of the competitive advantages we can offer."