When it comes to community service, Darren Lemmon knows how to get his head in the game. Each year for the past seven years, a local Las Vegas team of fifteen to thirty volunteers, including Lemmon, has raised close to $100,000 for St. Baldrick’s Foundation, an organization dedicated to funding research and treatment for childhood cancer.
During the foundation’s annual head-shaving event in March, volunteers buzz their heads for donations. “We approach coworkers, business clients, friends, and neighbors, and tell them we’re shaving our heads to support kids with cancer,” says Lemmon. “We ask them to either join us or donate. Most people say ‘absolutely not’ to shaving their heads, but they are usually willing to give us money.”
Lemmon admits that having his head buzzed for the first time was “really, really strange,” but as he was sitting on the stage waiting for the announcer to introduce his group of “shavees,” he looked down at the audience and saw two young children. “They didn’t have any hair because they’d been going through cancer treatments, but they were so excited to see everyone there, giving donations that would ultimately help them. It was touching. I thought, ‘Hey, this is not a big deal. I can do this. This is more important than my hair.’”
Lemmon, a 1991 organizational behavior graduate, lives in Las Vegas with his wife, Sona. He enjoys golf, tennis, hockey, and snowboarding.
When asked to list his most important accomplishments, his first response is family and the relationships he has built with his wife, five children, and eight grandchildren.
In a roundabout way, family relationships are what led Lemmon to his career in commercial real estate. After graduating from BYU Marriott, he worked in the insurance industry for several years, first in medical cost containment and later as a broker selling health and life insurance products.
In the late 1990s, Lemmon’s brother-in-law invited him and his wife to join with a group of family members and friends to buy a large tract of land, which they later sold to a home builder. They got a good return on their money, so the group rolled their profits into a series of other projects in the fast-growing Las Vegas area. “Those investments piqued my interest in real estate,” he says. “I found it fascinating that you could buy and sell it as a commodity.”
When the group built and leased an industrial building, Lemmon got his foot in the door of the commercial real estate world. He gained knowledge and practical experience that in 1999 led him to a job at CBRE, the world’s largest commercial real estate investment firm.
More than twenty years later, Lemmon is one of four partners in CBRE’s Las Vegas advisory and transaction services–office properties team, where he coleads a group that specializes in leasing and selling office buildings. The team facilitates approximately 130 commercial leases annually and is responsible for some of the largest and most notable transactions in the Las Vegas market.
The key to that success, Lemmon says, is the solid connections they have built with their clients—both local companies and national corporations. “Real estate is all about relationships,” he explains. “Both tenants and landlords trust us and know that we’ll make sure they get the best deal when we are representing them. Our success comes from having a strong team with strong relationships.”
