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Does CRE Matter? The C-Suite View of Corporate Real Estate Value
9:00 AM | Location TBD

Corporate real estate (CRE) has long been positioned by industry professionals as “no longer just a cost center”— a major balance-sheet item, but more a key contributor of business outcomes, talent retention, and corporate culture, acting as a critical bridge between the C-suite, Business units, and operational objectives. 

With occupancy costs representing 5–15% or more of operating expenses and many CEOs naming talent availability as their top risk, one question remains: how does the C-suite really view CRE today?

Join a panel of senior business executives as they share a candid look at the real value of corporate real estate, including how they evaluate the impact of corporate real estate on enterprise performance, talent strategy, and organizational agility. The discussion goes beyond theory to explore where CRE teams are adding real value today, and where opportunities are being missed. If real estate disappeared tomorrow, would it matter—or does the workplace and CRE leadership play a critical role as an enabler of business growth, innovation, and performance?

This session challenges CRE leaders to rethink how they engage the business, prioritize work, and pivot to position real estate decisions as strategic enablers of growth, resilience, and outcomes that matter most to senior leadership.

Speakers:

  • Stephanie Franklin | Chief Human Resources Officer | Vertex Pharmaceuticals
  • Nathan Rogers | Chief Information Officer | SAIC
  • Barry Hyntinen | Chief Financial Officer | Iron Mountain
  • Chris Horblit | SVP, Workplace Services | TJX Companies - Moderator


 

Employee Centricity and What it Means for Adaptive Leaders
10:45 AM | Breakout Session | Location TBD

As AI reshapes workflows and hybrid work becomes the norm, these essential practices can be applied immediately to improve outcomes for employees, customers, and shareholders. Deborah Lovich, BCG Managing Director and Senior Partner and BCG Henderson Institute Future of Work Fellow, shares the groundbreaking research behind her forthcoming book Make Work Work: The Five Daily Practices of the Employee-Centric Leader. Drawing on work with hundreds of global organizations, she'll unpack how adaptive leaders are unlocking measurable value from AI, reducing attrition, and helping employees bring their best selves to work — every day. Walk away with five concrete practices you can apply Monday morning to make work better for employees, customers, and shareholders alike. 

Speaker:

  • Deborah Lovich | Managing Director and Senior Partner and Henderson Institute Future of Work Fellow | BCG

 

Powering the Digital Frontier: Data Centers, Energy Demand, and Real Estate 
10:45 AM | Breakout Session | Location TBD

AI and digital infrastructure are now growing at more than twice the rate predicted by Moore's Law, driving toward 100 gigawatts of new U.S. energy demand by 2030 and an estimated $500 billion in annual data center spend. The implications for corporate real estate are profound — and largely under-discussed. This session brings together data center developers, utility executives, and corporate real estate leaders to explore how surging energy needs are reshaping investment strategy, site selection, and long-term portfolio planning. We'll examine the evolving data center market, power procurement and grid constraints, sustainability trade-offs, community impact, and what energy-intensive real estate means for occupiers who never thought of themselves as energy buyers. If your portfolio touches the digital economy, this conversation is essential. 

Speakers:

  • Jeffrey Tapley | Chief Operating Officer | Digital Realty
  • Dan Verbanac | Senior Vice President of Power, Mass Markets, Solution Sales | Constellation
  • John Bullen | Executive Director | Comcast
  • Kevin Corbousier | Senior Manager of Enterprise Energy | Comcast
  • Robert LoBuono | Global Leader, Critical Facilities Practice | Gensler - Moderator

 

Better Together: Leveraging Strategic Partnerships to Create CRE Value 
10:45 AM | Breakout Session | Location TBD

The outsourcing playbook has changed. Leading CRE organizations are moving beyond traditional service contracts to build “tiger teams” — flexible coalitions of partners engaged precisely when their expertise is needed most. The result: leaner internal teams focused on high-impact work, paired with on-demand specialists for M&A support, talent strategy, benchmarking, procurement, and savings initiatives. This panel explores the new strategic partnership models reshaping how work gets done, and the harder question every CRE leader now faces: what should stay in-house, and what shouldn't? Hear from executives who are actively redesigning their operating models, navigating regulatory and organizational constraints, and finding the right balance between internal capability and partner leverage. The takeaways are immediately applicable — whether you're insourcing, outsourcing, or rethinking both.

Speakers:

  • Erin Mical | Vice President, Global Workplace Services | Capital One
  • Laks Natarajan | Chief Procurement Officer and Head of Global Real Estate & Facilities | Marsh
  • John Mathew | Executive Director, Global Real Estate & Master Planning | Charles River Laboratories
  • Katy Redmond | Senior Managing Director, Integrated Portfolio Services | JLL

 

 

Talent and Workforce Evolution: Market Forces Reshaping Portfolio Strategy 
12:45 PM | Breakout Session | Location TBD

The rules of talent have changed — and the impact reaches far beyond the office. Immigration shifts, an aging workforce, declining labor mobility, and a deepening shortage of skilled trades and IFM talent are creating structural constraints that will define portfolio strategy for the next decade. This session examines how demographic transitions, regulatory uncertainty, and geographic talent imbalances are forcing large organizations to rethink where they operate, how they staff, and what role the workplace plays. We'll cover nearshoring's impact on operations footprint, AI's role in offsetting workforce gaps, the technical talent crunch facing facilities and engineering teams, and how leading CHRO–CRE partnerships are tackling these challenges holistically. Expect hard data and candid perspectives from executives actively reshaping talent and operations across the full portfolio.

Speakers:

  • David Kamen | Global Real Estate Leader | Evernorth Health Services
  • Julie Whelan | Senior Vice President, Head of Occupier Research, Americas | CBRE
  • More Speakers TBD


 

Competing for Capital | Making the Real Estate Case in a Resource-Constrained World 
12:45 PM | Breakout Session | Location TBD

Real estate is competing for capital like never before — against technology, talent, M&A, and every other enterprise priority. This executive panel brings C-suite and CRE leaders together to examine how organizations actually prioritize and deploy capital across their portfolios, and how real estate stacks up when the CFO is making trade-offs. Panelists will also provide an overview of capital markets trends that impact the cost and availability of capital for building owners and tenants. Panelists will work through the full spectrum of decisions: expand or contract, lease or own, renovate or build, reinvest or relocate, and when to divest. How do you build a compelling business case for real estate investment? How is ROI defined, measured, and defended? And what separates the CRE leaders who win funding from those who don't? A candid look at how capital decisions really get made.

Speakers:

  • Andrew Natale | Chief Operating Officer | SJP Properties
  • Linda Foggie | Head of Global Real Estate and Corporate Services | Scotiabank
  • Paul Gioioso | Senior Vice President, Global Real Estate and Workplace Experience | AMEX
  • Dan Nash | Senior Vice President of Finance | Pegasystems
  • Cory Saunders | Head of Real Estate Investments | Fidelity Investments - Moderator


 

Leveraging the AI Advantage - The Shift from Hype to Enterprise Value
2:00 PM | Closing Keynote Session | Location TBD

Tom Davenport is a renowned professor at Babson College, where he serves as Faculty Director of the Metropoulos Institute for Technology and Entrepreneurship and as the President's Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management. He pioneered the concept of “competing on analytics” with his best-selling 2006 Harvard Business Review article and 2007 book.
 
Tom has written or edited 26 books and over 300 articles for Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, the Financial Times, and many other publications. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University and has taught at Harvard Business School, the University of Chicago, the Tuck School of Business, the UVA Darden School of Business, Boston University, and the University of Texas at Austin.
 
Davenport's focus is on how artificial intelligence has matured from the initial “awe” of generative AI toward a disciplined focus on enterprise value creation and operationalization. This means establishing reusable capabilities, data pipelines, and governance structures that support multiple AI products and decisions over time. He emphasizes that the limitation in AI adoption is not the technology itself — it is the organization's capacity to absorb it, and the need for strong human oversight.
 
This featured keynote is an opportunity to envision the transformative potential of AI to reshape the capabilities of corporate real estate organizations — and the broader enterprise — through methodical, value-driven deployment.

Speaker:

  • Tom Davenport | Faculty Director, C. Dean Metropoulos Institute for Technology & Entrepreneurship, Babson College | Research Fellow, MIT Initiative on Digital Economy

 

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