Episode 2: Planning for Workplace Changes in COVID Reality

Harvard Real Estate Review

As COVID vaccines rolls out in countries around the world, we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel, looking forward to having the pandemic behind us in the near future. While remote work is still the norm for now, many are yearning for a return to normalcy with in-person collaborations and interactions at offices.

With the lessons we’ve learned from COVID about the importance of healthy indoor spaces, we begin to envision what the post-COVID offices will look like, as well as how we can use technology, methodology, and strategy to make workplaces healthier, more productive, and more comfortable.

The following questions emerge: Who will return to offices first? At what point? Who will remain remote? What should entrepreneurs and investors know about opportunities in workplace real estate as some companies consider returning to back to physical offices? How can Fortune 500 CEOs plan for potential office return in 2021 while improving productivity and bottom-line?

This episode features a cross-disciplinary conversation between the following industry experts:

· Zach Aarons (Co-Founder/Partner @ MetaProp.vc)

· David Gerster (VP/Investor @ JLL Spark Venture Fund)

· John Macomber (Senior Lecturer @ Harvard Business School)

· Dan Ryan (CEO/Co-Founder @ VergeSense)

The conversation was moderated by Iryna Papalamava (MBA’18), previously a Director and Principal at Boston Consulting Group Digital Ventures (BCGDV), and currently a Chief Operating Officer at Guardian Direct. This podcast series emerged out of her article entitled “Picking Winners and Losers in PropTech,” a comprehensive guide for investing in real estate tech published in HRER Issue #8.

The HRER podcast series is produced by Dixi Wu (MArch / MDes REBE ’22) and George Zhang (MArch ’21), Editors Emeriti of the Harvard Real Estate Review and Executive Editors of HRER #8.