About
Professional Summary
As the Creative Manager for Colliers’ Southwest Region, Cristiana Zarr works alongside Vanessa Williams, the Director of Business Development & Strategic Resources for the Southwest region, focusing on business development, overall strategy, and guidance to implement best-in-class marketing initiatives for the brokerage teams and clients.
On a daily basis, Cristiana provides creative direction for high-profile custom property marketing and brand development, cascade initiatives, toolkits, and templates, while also guiding the Southwest Region’s creative efforts.
Cristiana also coordinates with regional and local marketing team members to deliver high-standard branding and campaign solutions by developing branded deliverables across print and digital platforms.
The vast skillset that Cristiana brings, including solutions-oriented design aesthetic, creative leadership, and collaboration, all contribute to Cristiana’s success in her position.
Previously, Cristiana served as the Arizona Region’s Creative Manager, following new trends to develop innovative designs for strategic marketing initiatives, branding, and advertising campaigns. She determined messaging and design formats to drive maximum engagement and designed highly specialized property marketing campaigns. One of her primary functions was to support the Arizona Region team, train staff on creative marketing materials, and monitor project deadlines to ensure that they were completed as scheduled.
Cristiana has been with Colliers since 2005.
Accomplishments
- 2020 - Promoted to Creative Manager, Colliers | Southwest Region
- 2018 - Service Excellence Award, Colliers Arizona, for going out of her way to provide excellent service for clients, brokers and coworkers
- 2018 - Named Regional Marketing Lead for the Southwest Region of Colliers International
- 2018 - Promoted to Creative Manager, Colliers | Arizona
- 2015 - Promoted to Senior Creative Designer, Colliers | Arizona
- 2017, 2016, 2009, 2008 - Received the Commitment to Service Excellence Award, Colliers | Arizona, in recognition of going above and beyond in every aspect of her job and/or for a client or large project
- Awarded the Commercial Property Marketing Certification (CPMC) by Colliers. This is the first and only accreditation for commercial real estate marketing professionals and represents the highest educational accomplishments to increase strategic and tactical expertise in marketing and knowledge of our industry
- 2015 – Received the Dedication & Teamwork Award, Colliers | Arizona, for unselfishly contributing to the Colliers mission, demonstrating remarkable effort, service to colleagues and extraordinary loyalty to the team
- 2009 – Received the All-In Award, Colliers | Arizona, for representing the spirit of our 2009 theme of "All-In—Energy–Community–Trust," demonstrating she is fully committed to moving to the next level and to setting winning strategies for the future.
- 2008 - Promoted to Senior Designer, Colliers | Arizona
- 2007 – Colliers International North America ACME Award – Accelerating Communications and Marketing Excellence: Category – Specialized Marketing
- 2007 – Colliers International North America ACME Award – Accelerating Communications and Marketing Excellence: Category – Client Event
Education
- Bachelor of Arts, Visual Communications
Memberships & Involvements
- NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association
- AIGA, HOW Design Conference Attendee 2010 and 2006-2008
Testimonials
"Cristiana is not only an exceptional seasoned graphic designer, but also a creative genius. She guides her clients through the entire creative process while coming up with the perfect positioning for each of her projects. She designs custom, innovative marketing campaigns with flawless execution and acceptable attention to detail. She prides herself on only providing best-in-class marketing materials and has raised the bar for our entire industry. It’s truly a privilege to work with her!"—Vanessa Williams, CPMC, Marketing Director, Colliers International in Greater Phoenix
Services
Skills
Service Lines
My Team
My Team
In her role as Director of Business Development & Strategic Resources | Southwest Region for Colliers, Vanessa Williams oversees a talented team of marketing and research professionals across Arizona, Nevada, Greater Los Angeles, San Diego, Texas, Utah and Hawaii. Serving as business partner and advisor to the regional president, division leadership and local markets across the Southwestern Region, Vanessa is tasked with developing a highly effective salesforce to achieve organic growth and continuously increase market share for Colliers.
Collaborating with regional and local leadership teams and brokers, Vanessa is focused on developing and implementing marketing and research strategies to position the region as a leader in the commercial real estate industry through innovative and measurable tactics. Her goal is to elevate marketing and research teams to operate as strategic partners to Colliers’ brokers.
Working closely with key support functions, Vanessa assists in managing the business development process, the identification and qualification of opportunities, and the assignment of new opportunities to local or regional pursuit resources and/or the national Business Development Center. She is accountable for developing the structure and resources required to execute business development plans for the region.
Regional team:
The Colliers Regional Strategic Projects Team comprises the most talented and experienced professionals across the region. The team serves as strategic advisors to Colliers’ brokers and clients and partners with national marketing and research leaders to cascade regional initiatives and objectives to local markets.
Under the direction of the Director of Business Development and Strategic Resources, the regional team leads a network of marketing experts to develop actionable marketing initiatives, champion the adoption of new technology, and identify and implement best-in-class marketing processes and practices. The team is responsible for developing avenues to strategically partner with business line leaders to target and win new business.
The team’s approach blends the insight and imagination of incredible people who see endless possibilities. We foster a culture of innovation and collaboration that informs, connects and advances the interests of our clients and professionals through business development, property marketing, digital engagement, research and public relations. Our fully internal regional team takes advantage of a comprehensive set of tools and resources, with expertise in all areas of commercial real estate marketing. We create high-quality content that tells a story and is useful, relevant and thought-provoking.
Background:
Previously Vanessa served as marketing director for Colliers in Arizona and regional marketing ambassador for Colliers’ Southwest Region, where she fostered a culture of innovation and collaboration that informs, connects and advances the interests of clients and professionals through business development, property marketing, public relations and digital engagement.
As marketing director for Arizona, Vanessa led an innovative marketing team strongly focused on business development. Her young and innovative approach resulted in new strategies for commercial real estate marketing, focused on the growing influence of social media and the changing landscape of the new economy. As a vital client-facing professional, Vanessa has been actively involved with brokerage professionals in pitching new business. Throughout the creative process, she worked hand-in-hand with brokers and staff to develop highly effective marketing concepts and strategies.
As regional marketing ambassador for the Southwest Region, Vanessa partnered with regional and national marketing leaders to cascade regional initiatives and objectives to local marketing directors, managers and Colliers Centers of Excellence leaders. She guided a network of marketing experts to develop actionable marketing initiatives, champion the adoption of new technology, and identify and implement best-in-class marketing processes and practices. Working with local marketing managers and directors, Vanessa found avenues to strategically partner with business line leaders to target and win new business.
Her work with Colliers has allowed Vanessa to combine her passion for growing the company’s business through marketing with her commitment to values and ethics. She joined Colliers in 2015, with enthusiasm for the company’s unique value-based culture and is dedicated to moving that mission forward.
Vanessa demonstrates exceptional skill and expertise in several core components of marketing, including business development, branding, asset positioning, property-marketing campaigns, public relations and advertising. She brings more than 14 years of extensive experience and knowledge in all aspects of marketing, business development and graphic design.
Her tenure in the commercial real estate industry began in 2007, when she served as a graphic designer at Grubb & Ellis. Vanessa left the commercial real estate industry for a few years to hone her skills at Campbell Fisher Design (now known as Fisher). She returned to commercial real estate in 2013, joining Cushman & Wakefield as manager of its marketing department for Arizona.
As the Digital Marketing Manager for Colliers | Southwest Region, Marie Bell enhances the creative technical aspects of marketing on behalf of internal and external stakeholders. Working with local marketing teams across the Southwest, she generates, executes, and evaluates digital marketing strategies to implement best-in-class methods throughout the region.
Her responsibilities encompass digital presentations, custom property websites, email marketing campaigns, social media strategies, training and onboarding, and internal digital initiatives that enhance and raise the profile of our organization and professionals.
As a service-oriented professional with a commitment to producing results within strict deadlines, Marie ensures materials are delivered with the highest quality and branding standards. She is a conceptual thinker who believes design can and should make a positive impact and is always up to learning new skills and tackling new challenges. Colleagues describe Marie as an extremely quick learner, a smart designer, and a creative problem solver.
Her advanced skills include Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop), Ceros, Constant Contact and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Sitecore, Hootsuite and Microsoft Office. With a diverse background in design and marketing, Marie's experience includes working with both large corporate and small local companies. She has developed and adapted her skills over time and has created a wide array of designs across various print and digital formats.
Before coming to Colliers, Marie was involved in creating a variety of graphics for events hosted by Square Egg Entertainment, including Phoenix Fan Fusion (formerly Phoenix Comicon), Minnesota Fan Fusion and Vegas Fan Fusion. She created designs for web, social media, apparel, promotional items, and print collateral. As graphic designer and production assistant for Sportex Safety, she worked under tight deadlines to create graphics and production-ready files for a broad range of mediums, including screen printing, embroidery, laser engraving, print media, banners, and signs.