Kelly Givens Bio: Savills Vice Chairman & Real Estate

Real estate usually attracts two kinds of people. You have the talkers—the guys who can sell ice to an eskimo but couldn’t read a blueprint if their life depended on it. Then, you have the builders. These are the ones who see a building not just as a commission check, but as a living, breathing machine. Kelly Givens is the latter, and frankly, in this industry, that makes him a bit of a unicorn.

Currently serving as Vice Chairman at Savills, Givens has carved out a lane that most brokers can’t even merge into. I’ve watched the commercial real estate game for a long time, and it’s rare to find someone who is just as comfortable arguing about load-bearing walls as he is negotiating a ten-year lease term. He doesn’t just “find space.” That’s too simple. He engineers the demand.

If you are looking for a standard corporate biography, you can check LinkedIn. But if you want to actually understand how Kelly Givens operates—and why he has become a go-to for complex headquarters deals—you need to look at the messy, interesting path he took to get here. It wasn’t a straight line. It involved drafting tables, construction sites, and yes, even a stint at a tomato factory.

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Key Takeaways

• Not Your Average Broker: Givens is a licensed Architect and General Contractor, meaning he spots physical problems with a building long before the lease is signed.
• The Savills Vice Chairman: He leads high-level strategy in the Corporate Services Group, specializing in complicated tenant needs.
• The “Engineer” Mindset: He coined “Occupier Demand Engineering” to explain his backward-working process—start with the people, end with the building.
• The Big Wins: He orchestrated the massive MPAA headquarters recapitalization and major studio deals for FOX Television.
• The Artist: He never stopped drawing. He’s known for sketching scenes on napkins and notebooks during corporate trips.
• giving Back: His “Learn, Earn, Return” motto isn’t just talk; he is deeply entrenched in the real estate program at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

Wait, Did He Really Start at a Tomato Factory?

You’d expect a guy at the top of the Savills food chain to have started as an intern at a hedge fund or a runner on Wall Street. Nope. Kelly Givens started with tomatoes.

It’s one of those stories that sounds made up, but it frames his entire work ethic. One summer, chasing a paycheck that was fatter than what drafting jobs were paying, he took a union gig at a Hunt’s tomato factory. His job description? Sit in a chair. Watch a vat of tomato paste. Make sure it doesn’t overflow. That’s it.

Imagine the mind-numbing boredom. For a guy with a creative itch, staring at red sludge for eight hours a day is torture. He realized pretty quickly that a big paycheck doesn’t mean much if your brain is rotting. He calls it a defining moment. He sat there, smelling tomatoes, and decided he was never going to trade his engagement for cash again. He needed a career that used his analytic brain and his creative side. Whenever he’s deep in a complex negotiation now, I bet he looks back at that vat and thinks, well, at least it’s not the paste.

How Does an Architect End Up in Real Estate?

This is the piece of the puzzle that explains his success. Givens graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a Bachelor of Architecture. He didn’t just study it; he lived it. He worked for a firm designing homes for the Irvine Ranch back when Orange County was still finding its feet.

But here is where he pivoted. Most architects stay in the design lane. They draw the dream and hand it off. Givens realized that the people actually controlling the dream were the ones controlling the money. He saw the “Golden Rule” in action: he who has the gold, makes the rules.

So, in the mid-80s, right when the savings and loan industry was going wild, he jumped the fence. He moved into development and underwriting. Think about how powerful that combination is. When Kelly Givens walks into a building today, he isn’t just looking at the lobby finishes. He’s looking at the bones. He knows if the floor plate efficiency is garbage. He knows if the retrofitting is going to cost a fortune. He speaks “contractor” and “banker” fluently. That’s a bilingual skill set that most tenant reps just don’t have.

What on Earth is “Occupier Demand Engineering”?

If you ask Givens what he does, he might drop this phrase on you. It sounds fancy, but the concept is actually brilliant in its simplicity. “Occupier Demand Engineering” is his way of saying, “Let’s stop guessing.”

Here is how the typical process works: A CEO says, “We need an office for 200 people,” and a broker runs around town looking for 40,000 square feet. It’s reactive.

Givens works backward. He approaches the problem like an engineer. He digs into the HR data. Who are these 200 people? How often are they actually in the office? What kind of power requirements does the IT team have? He builds a data profile of the company first. By the time he actually looks at real estate, he knows exactly what the “unit cost” needs to be. He predicts the capital spend before a hammer is even lifted. In a market where construction costs are skyrocketing, this kind of precision saves clients millions. He isn’t guessing at the budget; he’s engineering it.

Can He Actually Bridge the Construction Gap?

You know the nightmare scenario. You sign a lease because the landlord promised a nice Tenant Improvement (TI) allowance. You think you’re covered. Then your project manager walks in and says, “Yeah, that allowance covers the drywall and paint. The HVAC upgrades are going to cost you another $500k out of pocket.”

This happens constantly. It happens because the broker didn’t know enough about construction to ask the right questions during the lease negotiation.

Kelly Givens stops that train before it leaves the station. Because he is a licensed General Contractor, he can look at a raw shell and do a mental takeoff. He knows that if you want an open ceiling concept, the ductwork needs to be wrapped, the cabling needs to be organized, and the acoustics need to be treated. He factors those costs into the initial negotiation. He essentially pre-constructs the deal. He fights for the dollars you don’t even know you need yet.

What Are the Deals That Put Him on the Map?

You don’t get to be a Vice Chairman without putting numbers on the board. Givens has managed over 25 million square feet of deals. That’s billions of dollars in transaction value. But the size isn’t as interesting as the complexity.

Take the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) deal. This wasn’t a cookie-cutter lease. The MPAA had a valuable asset, but they needed to unlock that equity without losing their home. A lesser broker would have just said, “Sell the building and move to the suburbs.”

Givens and his team crafted a monster strategy. They marketed the property, brought in Trammell Crow Company as a buyer, but structured it so the MPAA kept an interest in the asset. They got cash out and got a brand new, state-of-the-art theater and office space built for them on-site. It was a sale, a recapitalization, and a build-to-suit all wrapped in one. NAIOP gave him an award for that one, and rightfully so. It was a masterclass in leverage.

Then there’s the FOX Television work. Broadcasting isn’t like accounting; you can’t just put them in any office tower. They have massive power loads, satellite line-of-sight needs, and acoustic requirements. Givens handled the lease for the WTTG and WDCA duopolies—nearly 60,000 square feet. He had to translate technical broadcast needs into real estate terms that a landlord could understand.

Why Does the “Artistic” Side Matter?

This is my favorite part of the Kelly Givens story. In a corporate world that is often gray and beige, Givens brings color—literally.

David Lipson, the CEO of Savills North America, has a framed sketch in his office. It’s not a print he bought at a gallery. It’s a napkin sketch Kelly did during a company retreat.

Givens never lost the architect inside him. When he travels for Savills’ global winter trips, he’s not just sitting by the pool. He’s sketching the architecture of Sicily or the streets of London. It might seem like a small quirk, but it matters. It shows he pays attention. He observes. Real estate is visual. It’s about how humans interact with space. A broker who can sketch a layout on a napkin to solve a problem in real-time is infinitely more valuable than one who has to say, “Let me ask my design team and get back to you next week.”

How Serious is He About “Learn, Earn, Return”?

Plenty of executives talk about giving back, but it usually amounts to writing a check for a tax deduction. Givens takes a different approach. He operates on a three-phase life cycle: Learn, Earn, Return.

He spent the first part of his life hoarding knowledge—getting his architecture degree, his contractor license, his CPM, his broker license. Then he spent decades earning, using that knowledge to close massive deals.

Now, he’s obsessed with the “Return.” He is heavily involved with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He isn’t just a donor; he is trying to build a real estate program that churns out pros who actually know what they’re doing. He mentors young talent because he remembers what it was like to be the guy monitoring the tomato paste. He knows that the industry needs fresh eyes, but those eyes need to be trained to see the whole picture, not just the commission.

What’s His Leadership Style at Savills?

Givens is a “player-coach.” He sits on the Board of Directors, so he has a hand in steering the massive ship that is Savills. But he hasn’t retreated to the ivory tower. He is still on the ground in Orange County, running a team.

He has built his squad to look a lot like him—multi-disciplinary. He hires people who can think around corners. His team includes analysts, project managers, and strategists. They win “Broker of the Year” awards constantly, but I get the sense Givens cares less about the trophies and more about the proof of concept. Every win proves that his “Occupier Demand Engineering” works better than the old-school “dialing for dollars” approach.

Why is He Crucial for the Post-Pandemic Office?

Let’s be real: the office market is a mess right now. Hybrid work has turned everything upside down. Companies have no idea how much space they need.

This is where Givens shines. Remember, he’s the “Demand Engineer.” He doesn’t start with the building; he starts with the workforce. While other brokers are panicking because companies are downsizing, Givens is helping clients right-size.

He is guiding major TAMI (Technology, Advertising, Media, Information) companies through this transition. These companies move fast and break things. They need a real estate strategy that is flexible. Givens helps them structure leases that have breathing room. He advises on amenities that actually get people back in the office, not just ping pong tables, but functional design elements that support collaboration. He’s the steady hand on the wheel while the market is spinning out.

What is the Bottom Line on Kelly Givens?

So, who is Kelly Givens? He’s the guy who looked at a tomato vat and chose creativity. He’s the architect who learned the language of money. He’s the Vice Chairman who still sketches on napkins.

In a transactional industry, he is a technician. He brings a level of rigor to tenant representation that is frankly intimidating to the other side of the table. When you hire Kelly Givens, you aren’t hiring a salesman. You are hiring a builder who knows exactly where the cracks in the foundation are—and how to fix them before you ever sign on the dotted line.

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Šinko Boris

Hi, I’m Šinko Boris, the founder and lead editor of CelebsBioShow. With a deep passion for digital media and pop culture, I created this platform to provide accurate, up-to-date biographies of today’s most interesting personalities. From viral social media stars and adult entertainment icons to mainstream actors, my goal is to bring you the real stories behind the famous faces.

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