“Those three years that I spent in board seats, with a little more time for myself, were probably the most important years of my career journey, which is ironic, because I wasn’t working full time,” MacKay told Fortune in this week’s Leadership Next podcast. “I really hadn’t stepped back in a number of years and reconsidered my own path.”
Her background in finance and real estate were appealing at a time of declining revenues. When Cushman’s then-CEO John Forrester asked MacKay if she’d consider becoming CFO of the company, she said no, instead agreeing to become COO in 2020 with a clear path to becoming CEO in July of 2023. “It was a big challenge with a big brand and I had somebody who backed me from the onset. And I thought, ‘You know what? We got one version here, one life. I’m just going to go for it.’”
