About

Sean Treglia is senior vice president and general counsel, Latin America, government and public policy at CBRE, the largest commercial real estate services company in the world. Since joining CBRE in 2007, Treglia has made a significant impact on its real estate projects in Latin America, both by providing what one nominator calls ‘best-in-class legal advice that often surpasses the level of top-tier law firm partners’ and by helping to develop the company’s processes and structures in the region. For example, in his time with the company Treglia has: built CBRE’s first Latin America legal department, covering 10 countries; introduced an outside counsel management system, reducing legal spend by around 30% and significantly reducing employee-related claims in the region, and helped to introduce a new litigation management system in Latin America. While Treglia’s role focuses on Latin America, he has also had a much wider impact on the business. For example, he designed and built CBRE’s first government contracts, compliance and contracts management functions and has advised senior management on a range of significant matters globally. He has also worked as part of the senior leadership team involved in a number of complex acquisitions, joint ventures and other commercial agreements and has restructured a number of entities within the group. Treglia’s background is somewhat atypical of a successful corporate adviser. Before joining CBRE he spent much of his career providing public service and pro bono legal advice. In 2003 he founded the Treglia Group, representing community-based non-profit organisations as proxy general counsel. He has also served as president to the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission and as special adviser to The University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, where he delivered seminars and workshops on topics related to election and non-profit law. From 1997 to 2006 he was program officer at The Pew Charitable Trusts where he worked with a range of public listed and not-for-profit organisations on issues related to campaign reform, ethics and compliance.