(Chicago)–October 11, 2017–John J. Hentschel, CRE®, president, Hentschel Real Estate Services LLC, Abingdon, Maryland, has received the 2017 Committee Service Award from The Counselors of Real Estate® (CRE) invitation-only professional association. The honor, established in 1996, provides official recognition of exemplary volunteer service to the CRE organization. The announcement was made in Montreal during The Counselor organization’s annual fall convention.
Mr. Hentschel, former head of the department of real estate for the city of Baltimore, has spent hundreds of hours volunteering his time and expertise to further goals of The Counselors of Real Estate, focusing much of his time on leading and participating in pro-bono team projects for The Counselors’ public service initiative, the CRE Consulting Corps. He has also expanded recognition of the organization’s thought leadership through his editorial guidance on its publications.
During the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the U.S., Mr. Hentschel was in Washington, D.C. leading a volunteer CRE Consulting Corps team, whose assignment was to build a strategic property asset management plan for the General Services Administration, at the time, the largest landlord in the United States. Although the GSA office building was evacuated that day – and most people scrambled to leave the city — Mr. Hentschel’s team and GSA officials chose to stay. They continued working at a local hotel to develop their plan for the U.S. government’s buildings — 335 million square feet of space, much of which involved structures over 50 years old. Sixteen years later, the plan Mr. Hentschel and his CRE colleagues developed continues to guide the GSA’s asset management operations.
As a contributor to and editor of The Counselors’ peer-reviewed journal, Real Estate Issues (REI), Mr. Hentschel has pursued — and achieved — increased visibility for the publication which highlights Counselors’ outstanding thought leadership and property expertise. He secured more than 30 original forward-looking articles and reviews from leading real estate practitioners — demographers, educators and futurists from around the world — to produce the largest REI issue in The Counselors’ history, more than 160 pages – entirely focused on “Global Cities in an Era of Change,” drawn from sessions offered during an international conference of the same name co-presented by The Counselors and Stanford University.
Mr. Hentschel also developed a bold vision and conceptual plan for REI, to further elevate the profile and recognition of The Counselors and the CRE credential.
Throughout his more than 20 years as a Counselor of Real Estate, Mr. Hentschel has served in volunteer and leadership positions on numerous committees, including budget and finance, communications, the Real Estate Issues editorial board, and the Consulting Corps steering committee. He is currently a trustee of The Counselors of Real Estate Foundation and The Counselors’ Board of Directors. He served as a local CRE chapter officer for several years and as a member of the organization’s five-member Leadership Team in 2015.
Mr. Hentschel is recognized as an international property advisor. He advised Polish real estate officials about public domain and private markets when the country was newly independent; counseled leaders in major cities of the Republic of Moldova; developed and conducted real estate training programs for Croatian government officials; served as advisor to the Egyptian government regarding its real estate portfolio; and formulated an innovative model to expand national wealth for the Serbian Defense Ministry.
The Counselors of Real Estate®, established in 1953, is an international group of high profile professionals including members of prominent real estate, financial, legal and accounting firms as well as leaders of government and academia who provide expert, objective advice on complex real property situations and land-related matters. Membership is selective, extended by invitation only. The organization’s CRE (Counselor of Real Estate) credential is granted to all members in recognition of superior problem solving ability in various areas of real estate counseling. Only 1,100 people in the world hold the CRE credential. For more information, contact The Counselors of Real Estate, 430 N. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611; +1 312/329.8427; https://cre.org.