MIAMI—One of Tampa Bay's most successful commercial real estate professionals has joined Cushman & Wakefield. Julia Silva Rettig, a 20-year veteran, has been appointed as director of the firm's Davis Industrial Team. She will take over the team's overall industrial user and landlord leasing practice.

“We have achieved our goal of enlisting someone to run the operation that has an institutional owners' mentality,” says Mike Davis, CushWake's executive director in Tampa Bay. “She has successfully represented some of the nation's largest industrial and office REITs and positively driven the profitability of their business. We want to govern our accounts in lock-step with our owners.”

Most recently, Rettig managed the Tampa area for Penn Florida Companies, where she oversaw the leasing and management of a $60 million class A office portfolio. Her responsibilities included the repositioning of the assets, improving the occupancy in one asset from 20% to 85% percent over the past year.