Two new executives picked last month to head the Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group may help steady what’s lately been a stormy ship.
Kelly Kennedy Mack, the marketing group’s new president, and Tricia Hayes Cole, its new chief operating officer, both come from underneath the Corcoran Group’s formidable corporate umbrella. Mack was the Sunshine Group’s executive vice president; Cole was senior executive vice president of Corcoran Group Marketing.
Corcoran acquired the Sunshine Group, founded by Manhattan development marketing legend Louise Sunshine, in 2002, and the two merged operations in June 2005. Immediately, Corcoran competitors labeled the merger an attempt to ease out Louise Sunshine, who took the title chairwoman emeritus within the new group. Shortly after that, Jeff Yamaguchi, a veteran of the luxury hotel-condo industry, was named the group’s first COO; within four months, he was quietly gone.
After Corcoran announced the appointments of Cole and Mack recently, the New York Post speculated that their new jobs were an attempt to nudge Sunshine further into the background. Not so, said Corcoran Group CEO Pam Liebman.
“People who work with us every day know how integral Louise is to the operations here,” Liebman told The Real Deal. “She’s here for the long haul, and her role gets bigger as time goes on, not smaller.”
Liebman said Sunshine, in fact, hand-picked Mack for her new role after mentoring Mack since she joined the Sunshine Group four years ago. Sunshine paraphrased Mark Twain to the Post, saying reports of her demise within the marketing group “have been greatly exaggerated.” She told the newspaper she considered Mack “a Louise Junior.” Mack will oversee more than 150 employees in offices in and outside New York.
Cole, Liebman said, was “a natural choice” as COO because of her experience leading Corcoran Group Marketing the past four and a half years. Cole will focus on day-to-day operations at Corcoran Sunshine and on the integration of Corcoran Group Marketing and the Sunshine Group, both part of Corcoran Sunshine.
Corcoran also made two other appointments in April for Corcoran Sunshine. Charles Russell, a 15-year member of the brokerage and recently its vice president for business development, was appointed a managing director. He will work mostly on new developments in South Florida and New York. Jasmine Mir, a magazine industry insider who was most recently editor-at-large for Haute Living, was appointed senior vice president of marketing.