Diane: [00:00:00] I think our industry has some amazing opportunities ahead. You know, look, construction has not changed, you know, in a hundred years in some respects. I think we're gonna see dramatic changes coming in from that sector, which is going to enable perhaps different ways that people are thinking about investment from your vantage point. So I do feel that the entire ecosystem is going to move into more innovation and unlock more opportunity and more value as we go to the future. 

Nancy: Hello and thanks for tuning into Real Estate Capital. I'm your host, Nancy Lashine of Park Madison Partners Capital is a lifeblood of the real estate industry, but the decisions on where and how it's allocated are driven by people and personalities. Who are they? What motivates them? What can we learn from their experiences? On this show we introduce you to some of the real estate industry's most influential thought leaders and decision makers, and we talk about what is important to them, how they make critical decisions, who has influenced them, and a lot more.

Our guest on today's episode is Diane Hoskins, the global co-chair of Gensler. Founded in 1965, Gensler is the world's largest architecture and design firm that serves clients in over 100 countries. Gensler is known for its innovation and is the global leader in design. The firm also tackles the big questions like climate change, the future of cities, and the future of work.

Diane was named Co-CEO along with Andy Cohen in 2005, and recently became Co-Chair with Andy as they passed the reins on to two new Co-CEOs. During their 20 year tenure, the firm grew from 200 million in revenue to over 2 billion in revenue and to 6,000 employees in over 50 offices. In her role, Diane serves as a key [00:02:00] contributor to what is acknowledged by its peers as the most admired architecture firm in the world, pioneering project types and design innovation strategies for the next century, and acknowledged by publications as one of the world's most innovative companies, one of America's best large employers in 2024, and she was honored with the World Trade Center Institute's Global Visionary Award.

We discussed Diane's background, the work of Gensler, and covered many topics including AI, encouraging and compensating for collaboration, designing for the next generation urban environments, and Gensler's work in China, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. I hope you enjoy my conversation with this extraordinary leader.

Diane, I'm so excited. Thank you so much for doing this. I have admired you from afar since I, I think we first met when you became, uh, head of ULI was that like two years ago, right? 

Diane: Two years ago, yeah.

Nancy: Yeah. Yeah. [00:03:00] 

Diane: Well, I feel the same way, Nancy, and it's been fun to get to know you and just see your impact.

That's what been one of the great things of being at ULI is you just get to meet people that, uh, are, you know, you've heard of or they're in your ecosystem, but you've never met before so I've just really been delighted to get to know you. 

Nancy: Oh, well I feel very honored and really grateful. Thank you for that and thank you for being here. I, you know, sort of to your point, so much of what we do, what I do, keeps me in a capital markets framework. And so one of the great things about ULI in particular is understanding all the different aspects of real estate. And Gensler is the number one architecture design, preeminent really, firm in, in that space is, you know, a firm I really didn't know anything about for a long time except I'd walk in your [00:04:00] showroom if we needed to furnish an office or something and go, wow. So as the more I've learned about what you do, the more kind of in awe I am of the scope. So I'd love to cover in, in the short time we have together, obviously starting with your background and experience, but also just the extraordinary culture of leadership at Gensler, which I think helps- is one of the many things that helps the firm stand out, and then the growth that you've managed, uh, in the 20 or so years that you were co-CEO from what, 200 million to 2 billion in revenues, which is staggering to me, and then also just the breadth of expertise. I've known of Gensler, and I think many people listening know of Gensler as an office design firm, but you are so much more than that in so many different segments. And then finally, you know, the fact that you have the audacity to talk about big issues like solving climate [00:05:00] change or the future of cities or the future of work — it'd be good to just understand how you think about those things and how you've tackled them.

So, a lot to cover. But let's start with you. Tell us a little bit about you, and specifically how did you find yourself, find your way to Gensler? 

Diane: Yeah. Uh, well thank you, Nancy. Great, great, uh, set up to have this conversation and I'm looking forward to all the topics that you put on the table. You know, I think we all sort of start in a similar way when we're interested in the built environments.

You know, we just find ourselves fascinated with the places that we live and the world around us. And I grew up in Chicago and, you know, just had the great benefit and blessing of, you know, seeing that magnificent skyline pretty much every day. The city is designed in such a way, at least from where we live, you couldn't really go anywhere without seeing downtown. I mean, you were always kind of in the, in the distance was that great skyline and, you know, the beauty of such a well-designed city. And my mom worked for McGraw Hill, which was, uh, which published so many of the publications and magazines, uh, from architectural records to all of the construction periodicals and so forth, that a lot of that would come home with her. And I'd find myself kind of really looking at these great images in Arc Record Magazine. But also, you know, I just loved building things, you know, from Legos to, dare I say, Barbie houses, pretty much anything I could get my hands on I really just enjoyed, you know, building things. I had lots of sisters, so we had lots of Barbies and we would just have like a village of Barbie houses and, you know, but it was, it was just kind of my deep interest. So from imagining, you know, just beautiful new schools and things as I would look at, you know, the stuff mom brought home or the kind of hands-on, you know, building, I would say from about eight years old on I wanted to be an architect. 

Nancy: Wow. Aren't aren't you lucky? 

Diane: Yeah. 

Nancy: You're so lucky to know what you wanna do for, you know, most of your life.

Diane: My, my friends in, in grammar school in high school would say, wouldn't say lucky. They'd say I was boring because they kind of would have a new thing they wanted to be every year and every year in our yearbook, I would say architect, you know, and they're like, gosh, are you just so dull? You keep saying the same thing. But I couldn't think of anything else.

Nancy: I bet they're not saying that now. 

Diane: So, I stayed on the track and that's kind of maybe the way I am, I focus, you know, move things along. I ended up going to MIT, which, you know, when I looked at all the college catalogs, it was the top school of architecture at that time, and certainly now as well. So it gave me a great background and just superlative education in all things science, technology, architecture and so forth. 

Nancy: How many women were in your MIT architecture program? 

Diane: Not a lot. In the entire freshman class I think the total class, this sort of dates me, but the total class was about a thousand students, and there were about 80 women in the whole class.I mean, that covers all majors, right? So it was definitely an experience that, you know, for me growing up in a home where it was dominant women, there were, you know, four girls, one boy. So it was my mom, my grandmother, then my grandfather, and my father. So three guys and six women. 

We were the dominant, you know, uh, group in, in my home growing up. Uh, you know, going to MIT definitely was very different. I mean, I, you know, felt strong and I lived in the one women's dorm on campus, which I loved. I joined the only sorority on campus, which I loved. So I found ways to really build great female relationships as part of my experience, but also was able to compete and do the things I needed to do.

Which actually I always think of, sort of prepared me to get into architecture and the real estate and construction industry in general, which, you know, as you know, has been one of the slower industries to see a lot of women professionals over the last 20 years. I think we've gotten pretty far along at this point, but when I came in I joined, after graduating, I went to a firm called Skidmore Owens in Merrill, which was one of the largest, which probably was the largest, a premier firm, architecture firm at that time. 

Still, [00:10:00] you know, a global, uh, force. Yeah. And it was organized in these kind of studios of about 50 people. And you know, I had the good fortune of being in the only studio that was led by a woman partner, the first woman partner at SOM. And there were maybe about outta 50 folks there might have been about four or five women in our group. Um, but she was such an extraordinary role model, I have to say that was super positive. And I've had some amazing role models. Margot Grant Walsh from Gensler, she actually led our New York office builds and founded our New York office of Gensler 20, 30 years ago. And I had the chance to really join our firm back when she was active in the, in the profession as probably the leading figure, certainly the leading woman figure in commercial design. I've had great experience and opportunity to have role models who were men like Art Gensler and, and women as well.

I'll just say after working at SOM and actually my first building was, it's funny 'cause it's right there in New York, 875 3rd Avenue, which is at 53rd and third.

Nancy: That’s not the Cohen Brothers building, is it? 

Diane: It was the Gladstones and then I think it's traded a couple of times since then and I think even Boston Properties owned it for a minute. Which is funny. Uh, now that I'm on, on their board, you know, it's always funny I’m on the board.

Nancy: 53rd, that's not the lipstick building?

Diane:  It's right across from the lipstick building. 

Nancy: Okay. Right. 

Diane: It’s what I call City Cork. Right, right. 

Nancy: Yeah, I do too.

Diane: What a great, I mean that whole area is like such a mega, 

Nancy: I mean, that was the moment, that's when it was really, that's when it was all built. 

Diane: I mean, you got Lieber House, Seagram, lipstick, the City Cork, et cetera, et cetera. 

Nancy: And then that, that landmarked restaurant that they could never get the corner of, I forget what it's called, but yeah.

Diane: Yes, actually, yes. And then they finally, you know.

Nancy: Sorry, this is totally New York inside baseball. 

Diane: We should stop this! It's so in New York, right? Yeah. Um, so, you know, really after, uh, working on some great buildings and large buildings, while at SOM I kind of got the idea I wanted to go to business school because clearly the clients are a big driver in how the built environment comes to be, in particular developers. And so I kind of took it in my head that I wanted to go to business school and maybe become a developer after that. 

I went to UCLA Anderson School and — a great experience actually, you know, life changing in many ways, of course, going from, you know, building design to really immersing in the MBA program with a focus on real estate. And, but [00:13:00] after that, uh, took a position with Olympia & York, which, you know, again-

Nancy: Oh, interesting. 

Another, uh, great New York firm, but I was in the Los Angeles office. This was kind of in the, the late eighties at the pinnacle of their sort of-

Nancy: That was Paul Reichman's sort of heyday.

Diane: Yes, yes, exactly. Exactly. So a really incredible, 

Nancy: They did a great financing. They did that CBS financing, I think ,with Solomon Brothers. That was the first CBS financing on, um, it was a port a building in, uh, on Water Street in New York. Yeah. But anyway, 

Diane: I mean, they were groundbreaking in so many ways and, you know, you just learn a lot as a young person in any of these firms that are kind of at the top of their game. And that was kind of my criteria usually when I was looking at where I wanted to be is, you know, work with a leader in the industry. Someone who's gonna stretch you. You're gonna learn kind of where things are going, not just where things have been.

That's been a real key for me, is really leaning into the future. And of course, you know, that entire firm and, and where they were going with the SNL crisis and other economic challenges at that stage…they kind of went into a major kind of downshift, and so I decided to go back into design and now having had my MBA, now having had worked in the development kind of arena to come back into design and architecture and better able to engage with my clients by anticipating and understanding what their goals were and how to achieve them, but also really understanding the power and the potential of design because even in, you know, working at Olympia & York, I realized that all these things were part of the levers that they pulled and the issues that they drove. The architect that we hired to design the building we were working on really was the one who was expected to bring the ideas of what this building should be. I realized I wanted to stay on that side of the table, the idea side. Actually our architects should do more in terms of pushing ideas and not be as timid and to really try things and suggest things and open up possibilities for the client, the developer. And so with that in mind, again, kind of coming in, coming back in, really focusing a lot more on kind of  the how do projects really get formed and those early on kinds of consultancies that we can have with our clients before they're buying that piece of land or they're deciding to go in that building. What are they really trying to do? How do they know how much space they need for their headquarters? Let's back up into the why behind the projects. So that's really been, you know, kind of the driving force in a lot of what I focus on in design and architecture. One thing led to another and I ended up being asked by Art Gensler to lead the D.C. office of Gensler and that was almost 30 years ago. And I did that for about 10 years and grew the region to about, I don't know, 10 offices. And in 2005, he asked Andy Cohen and myself, Andy sitting in L.A. and myself sitting in D.C., to co-lead Gensler going forward. And so that's kind of what set up that trajectory.

Nancy: Are you, so as I understand it, Gensler has a long tradition of having co-leaders, not just at the CEO level. While now you and Andy are co-chair and you've announced the next generation as co-CEOs, but you said even down the ranks you have co-leaders. How does that culture work? Because when I think about other major corporations, it's extraordinarily rare and it's extraordinarily rare to see it in more than one generation of leadership. 

Diane: Yeah. Really great question. In many ways it kind of comes from the nature of what we do. So it is part and parcel with a practice of architecture that benefits from collaboration and that is at its best in a collaborative mode. 

We, you know, early on, are on teams of, you know, five people, 10 people, 20 people. No project is done by one person. There's not like this one guy sitting off in a corner doing the building. It's a team. And I guess in many ways, lots of our beliefs and understanding about leadership come from the model of leading in, in a creative enterprise, which means collaboration, which means what you wanna do is create an environment where you're surfacing as many ideas as possible and then coming to some kind of decision around those ideas as quickly as possible as well. That comes from a sense of collaboration, which we do bring straight into our leadership model from the top of our organization all the way through. And in that way I would say we build up a lot of collaborative muscle. We understand how to do that dance of ideating, deciding, moving forward, implementing. And the faster a leader is able to do that, the better and more effective you're gonna be. We do that from way early on in our careers moving forward. We bring pretty strong horsepower of that kind process into everything we do. Andy and I get that question all the time, and I don't know if you know the platform Semaphore, they just did  an interview with us on specifically this topic, and I actually think some things came out in that conversation that really almost gave me even new insights. But the fact that we are able to challenge each other, and most CEOs don't have someone who is going to regularly get into a “What if?” or “Maybe that, yes, but let's try something else.” That's very hard. You've got a hierarchy going. As soon as you step away from the top of that pyramid, you're now down into people who report to the top. So that kind of peer to peer real debate is not afforded the CEO. It really isn't.

Nancy: That's why coaching such a big business. 

Diane: Exactly. And, uh, you know, there's so many forums where, and they’re great forums where we're bringing CEOs together so that people can learn from people and I think that is super healthy. And you know, again, lots of organizations, Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Fortune…everyone has these CEO forums and I think it's because CEOs are starved of ideas and challenge and debate and discussion and peer-to-peer conversation, which is part of our day-to-day. 

Nancy: What if you learned about compensation to help encourage collaboration? 

Diane: Oh, that is, that's a great question and it's something we look at, uh, you know, as part of the model. No one ever asks that question, but that is-

Nancy: Maybe they’re much more polite than I am.

Diane: Oh, it's 'cause you're so smart! But it's part of it, right? Yeah, of course. Comp has to be about…well you know. You've gotta design a system that incentivizes the outcomes and behaviors that you're looking for. The outcome for us is growth of the organization. The behavior is collaboration. And so how do you incentivize both of those things through our compensation model? 

Nancy: 'Cause it's somewhat subjective. I mean, collaboration, its verb, right. And you guys live it, but if you're not part of the process, understanding who's truly collaborative and who's not is somewhat subjective. Right? It's, you can ask the people on the team who's helped you most. 

Diane: Right. That’s a good question.

Nancy: Maybe that's gonna tell you the right answer. Maybe it just tells you who, maybe it tells you something else. 

Diane: Yeah. You know there's gotta be a lot of inputs. It can't just be one input that's driving those decisions. And that's another part of how things happen within our organization is we get a lot of input from a lot of different sources for these kinds of decisions. 

We also really look at people who are in roles where collaboration is important, that they are receiving very similar compensation for the kind of outcomes that they are collaboratively bringing. So it's both what you're doing as part of your team, but also, obviously, what you're doing as well. And look, someone might have been in a role for 10 years and someone just came on board as that person's partner, they're not gonna have necessarily the same comp. There's gonna be a place where we recognize you as an individual and the length and the level of your contribution over time and those expectations of collaboration. And, by the way, in a culture like ours where we value collaboration and we call it this “one firm-firm” mindset, which is really the team has to win, not just you, and I know that's different from some other models, but for us it's about the team winning, not just the individual. It shows up loudly. 

Nancy: Yeah. Yeah.

Diane: Lack of, you know, non-collaborative behavior is not a secret in our organization. You could lose money, you can maybe do some other things that aren't so great and still we can coach you and talk to you and you can stay and continue and be great. But not being collaborative and operating outside our culture, it's something we really— you can't stay here. It’s not part of what we do. We feel like we've gotta draw a bright line around our culture. 

Nancy: Mm-hmm. Amazing. That is so cool. So let me ask you another question that absolutely has me scratching my head. I can't really imagine what it would be like to start at a firm that has 200 million in revenues and to leave your role at something like 2 billion in revenues and 6,000 people. I don't know how many you had the day you started in that role, but how did that happen? I'll start with that. I have a lot of questions, but I'll start with that.

Did it start with just more clients coming to you looking for more things? Did it start because you had a particular idea that took off? Like, and I'm going to mention something that I think you're doing right now that's so interesting, which is conversion of office to resi and like, say the Pearl Street Project or what you've done in New York where you've created a model to actually look at all the office buildings in New York and figure out what's convertible and what it would take and what it would cost. Did you start with sort of big ideas, big themes or ideas that you could sell? Or something else?

Diane: Nancy, you know, you really actually have answered your own question because pointing to that office to resi conversion that's going on right now for your listeners— I think it's an interesting example of what we believe in, which is ideas and bringing them to market. So, you know, creating the ideas and investing in the creation of ideas and then seeing where there is this market opportunity to bring those ideas in and then really supporting the scaling of that capability across our firm a creating a big— enlarging the geographic platform, frankly, to the benefit of our clients. 

All of this is to the benefit of our clients. And, you know, Art Gensler— we have our 60th anniversary as a firm this year, so congratulations six years ago Art Gensler great man, we lost him about three years ago, but a great guy, had a long life. One of the things, I mean, he was, it was such an interesting story to begin with— that would probably take the full hour just to talk about him and how he started the firm—one of the things he really focused on

Nancy: There’s a book in there somewhere if it hasn't been written.

Diane: There is a book, and he has a wonderful book, I think it's called “Art’s Principles.” It's a little book, so it's really concise and easy to read. He just lays it out there. I think any firm or any architecture firm could literally like build a firm around his book and do pretty well, and one of the core areas, 

Nancy: there's your 60th birthday gift, by the way, to all your clients.

Diane: It was a focus on clients and, you know, there's so many firms, especially when you think about when he came outta Cornell in the sixties, you go look for a rich client and they are your patron. I mean that, I'm sure, was the model that everybody came outta architecture school with—

Nancy: Or a corporation like IBM to build a building at the corner of Park Avenue.

Diane: Yeah, they just give you money to build things that you think are good, and Art just didn't buy it. You know? He felt it was about how do you help your client create success in what they're doing, you know? That their job wasn't to be your patron, that your job is to help them succeed. 

Nancy:Interesting, 

Diane: It's a fundamental kind of flip of that whole mindset that, you know, we're not here to find that patron. We're here to really help companies do great things, to be innovative, to maximize their people to help them to produce great leaders, find market opportunity and whatever that means. That is a constantly turning question as businesses and trends change so quickly. So you move that forward to when Andy and I took on the role of CEOs in ‘05, and both he and I— and I had just come through, a lot of you heard my whole “went to business school, became a developer, really focused on kind of the why behind buildings” and Andy had been working with major corporations and starting a lot of new businesses in our L.A. office based on what was going on in the market and the opportunities that presented. And I think we both, and there was a very, very amazing team of leaders, and we will call it the executive committee of our firm: Joe Brocato, who you might know, Robin Claire Avia, who you might know, Dan Whiney on the West Coast, along with Andy and I—just amazing leaders who, again, you talk about that sort of collaborative team, close the door, roll up our sleeves, and just would go at it and just say, what is it that's going to take us, you know, skyrocket our firm? How do we grow? How do we become smarter, better? The most amazing partner to our clients that this profession has ever seen? And we didn't use other architecture firms as our model. We looked at McKinsey, we looked at what, you know, other firms were doing, uh, to be top of mind and top of class and global and thought leaders and idea creators and influencing the world. Those were the kinds of things that we started talking about, all without precedent, all without any roadmap. And so we probably made a ton of mistakes and I know we did. And, you know, we tried things and then we would try something else. But like this office to resi tool, which was created, one of the things we created was a research institute—and to say, look, we gotta have ideas, so we gotta create ideas and let's invest in research. That was one of the things. Another thing was we need to be where our clients are going, so we have to start to expand our footprint into other countries. And that was hard.

Nancy: So double click on that for a sec. How do you open an office in a country where you don't speak the language and your clients maybe are bigger than you are, so they've gone there already, but how do you find the right people? How do you [00:31:00] transport that culture of collaboration? That sounds so hard. And you've done it over and again.

Diane: Yeah. Well now we have about 57 offices and we're in, uh, 16 countries. And, you know, it's interesting, I'll talk about opening China, for instance, uh, which we did in, I guess ‘06, ‘07. 

Nancy: In Beijing? Shanghai?

Diane: In, uh, Shanghai. And we had a, a partner, uh, who was part of the firm who was actually from Shanghai who had immigrated to the United States and gone to I think one of the universities across the U.S. but ultimately was in our Denver office. Here we got the world financial crisis, uh, whatever we wanna call it, global financial crisis. 

Nancy: PFC

Diane: Yes, and a lot was going on in our firm. Actually, it was even before, sorry, I'm, I'm sort of going a little too far. It was actually after the meltdown of what was happening in the early two thousands. So, you know, by about ‘04, ‘05, you know, it was a slow recovery, I mean, across the built environment. And every one of our offices was digging down and looking at, you know, where are we gonna find work? What kind of projects can we be doing in our Denver office where Jim Shaw, this was this gentleman, is like, “Wow. You know, a lot is going on in China right now. A lot of my friends from college are now in positions in the government in Shanghai.” And he started finding opportunities and we're like, great! Eventually, you know, folks started going to Shanghai with him. We were like, well, let's start an office. He was like, great, I'll move there. And, you know, when you talk about people speaking the language or from the culture, that is a key piece.

We have thankfully members of our staff that are often in the United States who are from another country. 

Nancy: Right, right. 

Diane: Who are, you know, who have risen through the ranks of our firm, who are really understand our firm's culture. They know everyone. So when they go and, you know, are partnered with maybe someone else in the firm to start that office, they're not there strangers.

Nancy: They can export your culture. 

Diane: Exactly. And we make sure there's work already starting before we're ever there on the ground. We never just show up and start an office. It's much more of working in that community before we're really, you know, necessarily putting resources there.

Nancy: Do you have people dedicated to marketing, to bringing in clients? Or is it pretty much just organic? I'm making you laugh. 

Diane: Great question. No, you get all the things that are kind of like the debates in the firm, right? Yeah. So, so, uh, you know, there's always, there, there are firms, not ours, there are firms who are very successful and they have, you know, people who are only focused on business development. Art Gensler, our founder, really believed in the marketer-doer model, and that's how all of us were trained, as you know being in the market, finding opportunities, being connected to the market, seeing in the market, engaged with, whether it's folks on the finance side or the broker side, or developers really getting to know people and being in the mix, right? Hearing about an opportunity and, you know, meeting with folks to let people know that we're interested and then when it comes time to really, as you know, it's often you're competing against other firms, right. And you're showing up in that conversation, it's not like the first time you've ever seen people or, uh, all of a sudden there's gonna be a handoff from a marketing person to the project team. There's just much more ownership. We also believe, and frankly, our firm has been built on long-term relationships with our clients, and we track this and well over 80% of our work comes from either repeat or referral business into Gensler. 

Nancy: That makes sense. So one of the things that surprised me as I was doing a little background on Gensler, I think of you as office architects and designers, and then I went “Well, and I guess you've gotten into residential.” But apparently you have four divisions, if I understand correctly. And you know, one is lifestyle, which is not just retail, but also stadiums and hospitality. And you have cities, which includes airports, probably one of the most active parts of your practice, and then health in addition to, you know, work.

When I think about historically when I've worked on projects, seems like the architects have specialized in one thing or another. So how could you possibly do so many things? Well, and how do you, how do you train people? Do you cross collaborate? And have people cross and do different types of projects, or do they tend to become expert in the sector?

Diane: Yeah. Uh, great. You know, set up as, uh, you've done your, your homework. So I'm, I'm so impressed, Nancy, but yeah, we look at it as sort of four sectors that are very like 360, right? It's work, it's lifestyle, health and cities and we feel like it's kind of touching all aspects of experience and all of them actually kind of find their way into each other’s realm. I mean, we think about an airport. You have a lot of people sitting there doing work in an airport, and a lot of those passengers coming through are people who are there for work, and so understanding the different kinds of needs of different passengers and travelers is super important to optimizing the traveler experience. But yeah, our firm kind of grew up in the work sector that was really Art Gensler's original, starting of our firm doing tenant work, doing headquarters, et cetera. And that's still a huge chunk of what we do as a firm. We're still the number one interior design firm in the world, and I think that we've held that position from the 1980s, so that has been like, we're like, we're not letting that go. Even though we do these other things, we're not [00:38:00] letting that go. But also, you know, from early on we were starting to do retail and, uh, working with retailers. Because we started in San Francisco, Art knew the founders of the Gap, he knew people in that market, that's where he lived. There was just great relationships that got built there that, you know, to this day we've probably done more Gap stores than anyone on the planet, but we've also done more B of A branches than anyone on the planet. And there's just a lot of kind of retail and customer and consumer facing kinds of things that Gensler does that a lot of folks don't realize that they're in a Gensler space when they walk into— we've done more branches of all the different banks than probably anyone, going on into things like fast food and even dealerships of cars.

Nancy: Wow.

Diane: There's just a really deep, uh, understanding and belief and I would say expertise in the experience that people have in those environments where we are literally in that discretionary mode. You're in your work mode and that performance side. Well, you know, when you come into, uh, what we would call a lifestyle space, you're really kind of self-identify what stores I go to, what hotels I stay at, what events I go to.

These are the kinds of drivers. It's very brand-oriented. So we have a very, very deep and significant brand design consultancy group within the firm that we've had for a long, long time. But then really, you know, again, cities and that's kind of this bigger view of our work and it kind of goes from working with tenants to all the way now to cities and realizing, and I mean, you saw it with Covid, this interesting interrelationship between work and our people coming back to workplaces?

Nancy: Right, right. 

Diane: And the health of our cities. I mean, just that relationship, just became so stark. 

Nancy: So when you say you work with cities, is it like the economic development corporation of a city would be your client? Or who is your client when you work with a city? 

Diane: It can be, as you said, the economic development corporation, especially in existing cities, redevelopment agencies like in Detroit, where we're helping them to reimagine parts of the city. It could easily be developers that are doing large tracks of residential new developments in places like Texas or Florida. And then in lots of parts of the world we're talking about brand new cities. 

Nancy: Oh wow. I guess that's like China. 

Diane: Uh, certainly a lot in China and a lot right now in the Middle East. And we're starting to do this kind of work also in Africa. We have many projects in Latin America where we're looking at pretty significant new city design as well.

So it's that full gamut of cities. But all of the sort of parts and pieces as well when we're talking about mobility and transportation systems, airports, as you mentioned, has been an earmark of our firm for many, many years, but, then really turning that full circle on health, and this has been a big focus of our firm over the last 10 years to really build our health practice and healthcare practice.

Nancy: So what, what does that mean other, is it building hospitals, senior facilities?

Diane: Yeah. All the above. I mean, you know, what we found was—and there's some great firms that are very dominant in this area—but they're also bringing kind of legacy thinking about health. And as we know, there's a, a much more holistic thinking that is about the experience in that hospital, not just the technology, not just the throughput. But really how do you help, how do you bring health into the experience that someone has? How does their family interact with that place? How do people feel bringing a lot of that lifestyle-thinking into what happens in all the touch points of a healthcare experience? We just won and we're super proud of a new hospital facility for the Mayo Clinic that we're going to be—

Nancy: Oh wow. 

Diane: That we are in the process of just starting the design in the Phoenix area. And, you know, it was all about the future of healthcare. It was not about past design models, but really where they're going in the future. Also, we know people want healthy workplaces. So how do we bring our knowledge and understanding of health into the workplace? And we know that, you know, again, in all of these having expertise around that full circle, but also bringing those expertise together as we design in any part of that spectrum.

Nancy: So some people say that AI will disintermediate some architects, but clearly as an innovator, you guys are using AI in truly innovative ways. How do you invest as a firm in technology and how do you think about the spend and the types of people you have to add to really be at the forefront of AI for your sector and how much can you just find third party resources that you can buy in and utilize? 

Diane: Nancy, I think you were at our board meeting two weeks ago!

Nancy: No, just, I've had the privilege of thinking about Gensler for, you know, a little time in prepping for this and that struck me as sort of the obvious question.

Diane: Well, you teed that up again so incredibly astutely. Um, and it is a, you know, as you can imagine, probably every board is talking about AI in one form or fashion. Our board is, takes seriously the role as future-caster and creating that vision for the future of the firm. AI and what we'll call advanced technologies is an important part of that. We really are reimagining the firm for the future and we have enough understanding of what we've done kind of in the edges of all of these technologies, and we can see how the paths of any of these as we invest can take us into some very exciting directions for our clients and for the process of design.

I think that the good news is that I don't think we'll be fully disintermediated, but I think some of the parts of what we do that end up taking up a lot of time can take less time and we can bring our focus to the outcomes of the design and really starting to do more predictive work around options and possibilities and being able to, I think create a process. It's very exciting for our clients, but also where they can start to see, “If I took this direction, if I took that direction” and being able to model what those possible outcomes would be, not only in the short run, but also in the longer run.

If you just look at where we spend a lot of our time, it's in drawing creation. Nothing wrong with that and that's super important. We gotta all be on the same page and know what we're buying and know what we're building. Right? So if our systems can help us to make that a lot more [00:46:00] efficient and then our intent is to invest in some of these other areas of value for our clients, we feel like it's pretty exciting for the future. 

Nancy: Alright. I'm going to, because I spent so much time thinking about this, I'm going to, I'm going to try to put you on the spot a little bit more.

Are the drawing programs that you're using or planning to use, ones that you can buy off the shelf and then tailor for yourselves? Or do you have to build them from scratch? 

Diane: You know, and that's the $64,000 question. Our perspective is the kinds of things we want to be able to do are in many ways not going to be off the shelf and whether it's in the drawing realm or some of these other things I'm talking about. So, you know, our own R and D is gonna be an important investment. Our own areas of research are gonna be an investment. The opportunity we have because of our scale, you know, we're a very tightly run company and we don't run on debt. We have resources and we believe that now's the time to make the kind of investments in the future that are going to give us not only advantage in the architectural market, but actually to bring tremendous value to our clients, and frankly, influence the overall ecosystem as well. I think we're all kind of caught in models that are probably from the past and where we could all see, you know, benefits to doing things slightly differently. 

Nancy: How many of your 6,000 or so employees or programmers today? 

Diane: Who write code today? 

Nancy: Who write code you, for Gensler.

Diane: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think we've got probably, I don't know, a hundred design technology folks that have been involved in creating. We have advanced platforms right now. So what we're talking about in many ways is not the future; it's the current, it’s the today/

Nancy: Taking it to the next level today.

Diane:Yeah. Yeah. Um, we've got an amazing leader of design technology who joined us from Disney about five years ago and brought just very new thinking around the kinds of drawing platforms, how we might use something off the shelf, but then add some other things to it, and working with the practitioners to create things that really do give us the ability to not only draw, but also bring intelligence into some of those designs. 

Nancy: Right. 

Diane: And there's people all over the world who have been attracted to join our firm because of what he has built and the kind of organization we are in terms of collaboration and innovation and opportunity.

Nancy: You know, Diane, I wish I had a time capsule that I could just jump into and see what your designs for different sectors look like in, I dunno, three or five years because I have no doubt that they will be different and there'll be aha-moments. 

Diane: Yeah. 

Nancy: So that’s super exciting. 

Diane: No, I was just gonna say I would love to see that also, you know? 

Nancy: You want to jump in with me?

Diane: Yeah,  

Nancy: I think you're driving it, so I, I think you'll be there. 

Diane: You know, I think our industry has, some amazing opportunity ahead. Construction has not changed in a hundred years in some respects. I think we're gonna see dramatic changes coming in from that sector, which is going to, you know, enable perhaps different ways that people are thinking about investment from your vantage point. So I do feel that the entire ecosystem is going to move into more innovation and unlock more opportunity and more value as we go to the future. 

Nancy: When do you think you'll actually have driverless cars and say Washington D.C. on a regular best basis? Not the test case, Waymo's, but let's see, a fair number of driverless vehicles.

Diane: I don't know. They'll have to fix the potholes in Washington before we get there!

Nancy: For sure. 

Diane: Yeah. I mean, I think all of our cities are going to continue to, you know, see new modes of mobility being tried and tested and D.C., I don't know if we'll be a front runner or not, I think there's a lot of cities that are probably gonna jump ahead of us.

And I, you know, I expect that cities that have less climate extremes and perhaps newer roads and maybe some clarity around, is it one way or two ways help as well. But I do think that the driverless car has real potential. I'm on the MIT mobility initiative, which is a very interesting focus at MIT that brings together everything from car manufacturers to insurance companies, to innovators to cities, and all talking about really EVs and AVs. And it's really changed my thinking. And part of it is I think we all kind of believed that all cars had to become, you know, AVs for the system to work. And I think the idea of a mixed array of different types of vehicles could be the future.

And one thing they've said is that if you introduce a certain number of AVs, like onto a highway, they actually regulate the speeds of all the other cars because they're only gonna go a certain level. So they kind of make the rest of the cars safer in their travel path, their driving speeds. So I've come to be more like, “Wow, it would be great to kind of have a bit of that standardization in our, you know, overall transportation that kind of regulates what other cars are doing and kind of brings it all into a more rational system.” 

Nancy: Right. Right. Wow. What countries, as we start to wrap, I'm just gonna ask you some kind of quick questions that pop into my head. What countries are you working in that have the most innovative cities? 

Diane: Wow. Yes.

Nancy: Or maybe just what cities do you think are the most innovative? 

Diane: Well, I think Singapore is always seen as, and I agree, as a city-state, however you want to think about it, as a place where they really take city planning very, very seriously, and economic development and how those things lock together. They're far more regulated than probably an American taste. But I think there's a lot to learn from what they do in being super mindful of the relationship between the economic success of the city and the planning of the city. And sometimes we're a little too, let the planning run this way and let the economic drivers in the market go that way, and you're not optimizing either. So, you know, that's fascinating. 

There's just so much going on in places like the Middle East where there's kind of a maturing of the sensibilities around city making and a commitment to modernization that is bringing about the design of new cities, especially in the largest, one of the largest countries, which is Saudi. I think there's going to be some very impressive new city building happening in the Middle East. Like we saw like when Dubai and some of those cities first started to emerge as just ideas. I think Dubai actually has become a global city in its own right and has done all the things that the investments and the seriousness of its markets to be taken as a global city now, and not just an idea of a bunch of buildings. China is kind of going through its own cycle and we'll see what happens, but it's not in the building boom anymore as we saw a decade ago. What's interesting, I mean, we're actually already now in the planning of our first office in Africa, on the African continent. 

Nancy: Where, where can I ask? 

Diane: Yeah. And so we're focusing on Nairobi, Kenya, as kinda where we believe is, is gonna be a great market for us. There's excellent talent that is in that market and comes from other cities into that market as a place to practice. We've done a lot of getting up to speed on how to operate in Africa. It's so large that you're not necessarily gonna do all your work on the west from an office in the east and, of course, Nairobi's in the east and you're certainly not gonna be able to do a lot of work in the south from there either. So ultimately it's probably a three office model, but with a start in Nairobi. We continue to be very bullish, in Latin America and seeing serious growth in our Mexico city office, and now we have an office in the Dominican Republic, and we have an office in Columbia, in Costa Rica with probably Argentina is not too far away as well. Again, we're seeing interesting and exciting opportunities and all of these places. From where we sit, it's a real growth year and seeing a lot of opportunity.

Nancy: Do you see a correlation, maybe it's a positive or an inverse correlation between cities being more innovative and social equality or diversity? Or are they unrelated in your experience? 

Diane: That's a great question. We engage with places who knock on our door to improve the lives of people in those cities and in those countries and so we don't stand in judgment of those places. We look at those end-users and really focusing on how we can make their lives better. We've worked literally in a hundred different countries in the last 12 months. There's only like 190 countries in the world. There's only 90 countries that we didn't work in! So, you know, the question you asked— 

Nancy: I think you and the Olympics have about the same record, right? 

Diane: Right. Yeah, exactly. So I think the question you ask is a great one. I think we hope that life gets better for people in places where they invest in their built environment. I think that's a core belief as an architect that what we do and what we do as an industry improves the lives of people, when, again, resources are deployed to create better places. 

Nancy: What did you learn from leading ULI over the last couple of years? 

Diane: Wow, that was a really great experience. I just continue to admire the Urban Land Institute and its ambition to just be a place for all of us, right? As you said, you know, we all kind of have our zone and our lane, in this overall ecosystem and we really don't spend enough time kind of understanding the world through each other's lens and ULI kind of forces us to do that. I say forces, 'cause in some ways, you know, it's always more comfortable to say, “Can they just talk about this part?”, you know? 

Nancy: Because I understand it, I know so much about it. 

Diane: Right. Well, and that's, that's the challenge is that we have members in all, sitting in all of those places and you know, we always hear sometimes complaints, “Well, they should just talk more about this, or they should just talk more about that.”

And, you know, I think the goal is to get all the way around the circle so everyone has that opportunity. I think, you know what? I guess one is just total respect for ULI, absolute excitement over the future. We've got a new CEO — super excited about that. You know, the folks that rearrange their schedules to be at these meetings and to be at our dinners and all of that. It's not like just gonna happen. Everyone has to get on airplanes and that thousands of people do that every year to be at our convenings and to be at our meetings, it's important. It's important for our entire industry. My husband and I, we are moving from one place to another and I was going through a bunch of files looking for things to throw out, of course, and I came across and you know — I've got these boxes of things that go too far back. 

Nancy: Oh, let's not go there. 

Diane: Let's not go there, right? But I found my first certificate of membership in ULI—

Nancy: Oh wow. 

Diane: From when I was in business school in the eighties. And I'm like, wow, I remember that and I remember, ULI being a resource. At that time it wasn't online. You got documents and the Urban Land Magazine was like something you really cherished. But I think about it as ULI is one of the few kind of standard-bearers that its materials are considered a go-to for our industry. We all kind of reach to those resources as the training tools or the information tools or the ideas and inspiration as we look at great projects that are being done every day or insights into what new regulations might be happening. Maybe there's one or two other go-to resources, but we all need a healthy ULI and a strong ULI and I think anything any of us can do to contribute a bit of our time to make sure that that entity as an institution is there for our industry.

Nancy: Hear, hear. Any book recommendations you'd like to share? Or movies or TV shows? 

Diane: Right? Right? 

Nancy: Something, some pastime?

Diane: Well, you know, my husband and I watch 1930s movies all the time, yet such an education on— 

Nancy: Is that Fred Astaire or?

Diane: Yes. Any of that. Looking almost beyond the plot to looking at just the things that people thought, you know, or the things that were important or ideas that floated around. And that's like a hundred years ago and how so many things— 

Nancy: That's, that's really scary to hear you say that, but okay.

Diane: No, it's true. And it's, you know, you realize how much certain things have not changed and how much certain things have changed. And, you know, to keep in mind always that there's some long continuums and then there's things that are kind of changing all the time.  I'll   recommend me and Andy's book. We did one of the hardest things I think we ever did as co-CEOs was write a book together. And it’s “Design for a Radically Changing World” where really the idea is, and I think this is true for all of us in whatever part of this ecosystem we're in is, from a design lens that the things we do matter and it matters to people, matters to their lives, matters to the cities that we design in, and can affect whether it's climate kinds of considerations or it's changes in the kind of cars that are gonna be on our streets. You just think about it with even that, what a disaster having all of these scooters just all, with no place, they don't have a lane, they're just—

Nancy: Yeah, yeah.

Diane: They don't know where they're supposed to go. Right? It's a great and fun thing to use, but then there's no place for it to be on our streets safely. Same thing for bikes. You know, we've worked really hard at trying to find a place for our bicycles, and what about safety for our pedestrians? And what about that e-bike that adds something weird to the mix? Just that we need design to come through and to kind of sort that concept of where do all these people and vehicles go so we can all have, you know, the safety number one, but also the experience that we're looking for. And you get into even things of, something we talk about a lot, which we see everywhere now which is the great places—and I'll say this from an investment standpoint—that the value is in creating places where people can connect with each other. I think it's kind of, you know, we've talked about mixed use a lot, especially at ULI for the last probably 20 years. But places where there's either that kind of serendipitous connecting or just being able to find places to sit and talk, or those places where you see others, or places where you're introduced to a new store or something new that you weren't looking for but you happened to go buy. But this idea of kind of single purpose zoning, single purpose buildings feels less and less like what people are looking for, and value follows people and their experience. That probably doesn't work for the data center, but that's a whole ‘nother conversation.

Nancy: That's a utility item. 

Diane: Yeah, exactly. 

Nancy: It's not really about people. 

Diane: Exactly. Yeah. Well, it's interesting, it's in our cities sector because it is part of that broader utility and infrastructure. But getting back to it, we do feel strongly, and it's talked about in our book, and we believe it from a value proposition, we believe it from an investment proposition, that bringing people together is not only important from a broader societal kind of day-one-how-people-were-wired, but also in kind of the post-Covid world that I think we all realized that, you know, “let's seek out places.” I mean, the places I find myself are definitely those places that were nothing like what I— being in isolation, that was kind of the antithesis of the life I wanted to live. So coming back for me, coming back to the office, being able to go to the great eating places, sitting outside, being inside in environments that are enriched with, whether it's biophilia and trees or beautiful spaces, things that inspire, but that, you know, we all only have but so much time in a day and sitting in that space at home was not the way we [01:06:00] wanted to spend our time. And so I think that's still in the background for a lot of us and helping to drive maybe different kinds of workplaces, which we have seen absolutely since Covid people want a different, maybe not a bigger, but a different workplace environment. And the same thing kind of goes down the line with retail stores or other kinds of places that we're designing. 

Nancy: Diane, I admire you and Gensler so much, not just because you ask the big questions and the hard questions, but then you come up with solutions for them and then you sell them to your clients and you actually get them built. So it's, it's a full circle and it's such a challenging thing to do and you're taking on the big, the big challenges and obviously doing it with incredible success. So. Thank you for spending time with us and for our audience today, and we look forward to watching Gensler for a long time to come. 

Diane: Well, Nancy, thank you so much. This was a great conversation and, you know, I appreciate the push and I appreciate the insights that you brought into the discussion and uncovering new ideas even for me as we've moved through this. So, thank you. 

Nancy: I hope you enjoyed this episode of Real Estate Capital. Before you go, I have a quick favor to ask.

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