Change is afoot as Boston realty firm rebrands itself

Peter Evans (left) and Stephen Prozinksi.Chris Morris for The Boston Globe

There’s a new CEO at Hunneman, as well as a new look and a new name of sorts.

The Boston real estate firm was previously known as NAI Hunneman. But it has dropped the NAI from its name as part of a rebranding effort that includes a new corporate logo. Despite that move, the firm will remain an affiliate of NAI Global, a network of real estate firms.

Stephen Prozinksi has been promoted by chairman Stuart Pratt to be Hunneman’s chief executive, making him responsible for all of Hunneman’s operations. Meanwhile, Peter Evans becomes executive vice president. The two had essentially been running the company together since former CEO David Slye left last year.

Prozinski will still oversee Hunneman’s property management work, which stretches across much of New England, while Evans will continue to lead the Boston-focused commercial brokerage division.

About 100 people work for the company, including 10 property management staffers in Baltimore.

Hunneman remains the largest independent real estate firm in the region, by several measures, and Prozinski and Evans want to use the brand revamp, in part, to accentuate that fact. The company has also invested in adding data analytics to its website and has launched a podcast that focuses on commercial real estate trends. It hired the Boston marketing firm State6 to come up with the new logo and website and to help develop a new strategic approach.

Pratt will remain chairman, but the day-to-day responsibilities of running Hunneman are now in the hands of Prozinski and Evans.

“Hunneman is fortunate to have two of the very best real estate professionals working together under one roof,” Pratt said in a prepared statement.

Leaders and opportunity

The legalization of sports betting opens up an entire new industry for DraftKings. And the Boston-based fantasy sports company wants to have the right leadership in place to take advantage of the opportunity.

The company made two key hires before its recent launch of its Sportsbook sports betting program in New Jersey, the first state to take advantage of a Supreme Court decision that legalized sports betting nationwide.

Computer game industry veteran Tom Goedde was tapped to be the company’s new chief marketing officer, while Andy Yang was hired to be the new chief product officer. (Yang was most recently CEO of Upsight Inc., a San Francisco tech firm.)

Goedde took over for Janet Holian, the DraftKings CMO since 2015. The company said Holian will stick around during this NFL season before retiring. Holian had previously worked at Vistaprint with DraftKings cofounders Matt Kalish, Paul Liberman, and Jason Robins.

“After we left, she served as an early adviser to us,” Liberman says. “We brought her to DraftKings knowing she was going to help us scale. We got her to stay a little longer than we expected.”

Liberman says both Yang and Goedde will soon relocate to Greater Boston; Yang is in the San Francisco area, while Goedde is in Washington state.

They are joining the 500 or so headquarters employees who will soon be moving to new digs in the Back Bay from the current main office near South Station.

“As we continue to grow and expand our Boston footprint, it’s great to have strong leadership here that will help us get to the next step,” Liberman says. “I think you’ll see a lot of new things over the next 12 months coming from DraftKings as a result of bringing those two guys on.”

Formalizing the bond

After Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications split up in 2017, Larry Rasky regularly turned to former Senate President Therese Murray for advice. She would occasionally do consulting work for Rasky’s public affairs firm, now known simply as Rasky Partners, and she joined the firm’s advisory board.

Now, Rasky and Murray are formalizing the relationship, with Murray coming on board as a senior adviser. It’s a part-time gig that allows her to keep overseeing the nonprofit she launched in 2015, MassIgnite, which helps promote the state’s tech sector in overseas markets.

“Terry has always been important to me,” Rasky says. “She’s one of the sharpest political minds we have in the Commonwealth.”

Murray says she hopes to offer MassIgnite’s services to Rasky’s clients, and vice versa.

Being able to tap into the expertise at Rasky’s firm could be a strong selling point for MassIgnite.

“It just gives me the ability [to tell] clients we talk to that we have this whole operation behind us that we can offer them,” Murray says.

All about value

Fidelity Investments shook up the fund industry by launching two index mutual funds without fees over the summer, a move that attracted some $1 billion in new money in the first month.

Then the Boston fund firm announced it would launch two more no-fee funds.

Chief executive Abby Johnson has one message for investors: “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Those weren’t her exact words. But they sum up her response to a question about the company’s approach at a public event at Fidelity’s headquarters on Friday as part of Boston FinTech Week.

Johnson talked about the deflation that’s occurring in financial services — a good thing for investors, but often a challenge for the companies that make money working for investors.

Cloud computing is helping companies like Fidelity reduce their expenses, at least.

“The way to win in this industry is to provide more value to people over time,” Johnson said.

“The less that you can charge for your service, then of course, the more value you can provide to people. I think that cycle is going to continue.”