Liz Trocchio Smith did not leave corporate leadership because she had reached the end of her career. She left because she realized she had more to offer. After more than three decades in commercial real estate, including senior executive roles at Cushman & Wakefield, The Woodmont Companies and Hines, Trocchio Smith reached a personal inflection point. She had built companies, led offices and mentored countless professionals. What came next was not another title, but a new way to scale impact.
Trocchio Smith is the founder and CEO of The Trocchio Advantage, an executive coaching and consulting firm built on the belief that leadership is learned through experience, not theory.
“She empowers high-potential professionals, especially women, to step out of their comfort zones, take on new challenges, and advance in their careers with confidence,” the person who nominated Trocchio Smith said.
Trocchio Smith’s career began in brokerage and development, but her leadership trajectory accelerated at Cushman & Wakefield, where she ran the Dallas office and later oversaw the firm’s Midwest region. Along the way, she became known not just for operational excellence, but for building teams and opening doors in an industry that was, and often still is, male-dominated.
“I built my career in commercial real estate — an industry that was, and often still is, very male-dominated,” Trocchio Smith said. “Early on, I realized that success required more than talent. It required understanding the dynamics, the politics and how to lead confidently in environments not built for you.”
Rather than allowing those challenges to narrow her path, Trocchio Smith leaned in. She founded and chaired Cushman & Wakefield’s Professional Women’s Global Gateway, a network that connected more than 1,500 women worldwide and helped recruit, retain and elevate talent across the firm. That experience planted the seed for what would later become her full-time focus.
After years in corporate leadership, Trocchio Smith launched The Trocchio Advantage to help others navigate the same inflection points she had faced. Her work spans executive coaching, leadership development, strategic alignment and succession planning for family-owned and corporate businesses. Clients include senior leaders, emerging executives and organizations seeking to strengthen their leadership pipelines.
“Now I help others to become who they truly want to be,” Trocchio Smith said. “Executive coaching, leadership development, workshops and key note speeches give me that opportunity.”
Trocchio Smith’s approach blends intuition with discipline. She holds an MBA from Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business and has earned advanced coaching certifications from Harvard University, the International Coaching Federation and Gallup. She is also a licensed Texas real estate broker, grounding her coaching in the realities of business rather than abstraction.
Industry recognition has followed, including honors such as Dallas Business Journal’s Most Influential Women in Business, Cushman & Wakefield’s first Diversity Service Award and CREW’s Outstanding Achievement Award. Trocchio Smith is also a co-author of “Winning Ways in Commercial Real Estate,” a best-selling book written with 17 other women leaders in the industry.
Outside of work, Trocchio Smith prioritizes time with her husband, Randy, her 7 year old twins, Max and Jordan (the 4 legged furry kind), and finds balance on the golf course, a place she jokes has become an obsession. The throughline, both personally and professionally, is intention.
For Trocchio Smith, leadership is not about authority. It is about influence. By turning executive experience into a platform for transformation, she has built a second act that extends her impact far beyond the offices she once led.
