Strategy
We are a multidisciplinary global practice that partners with our clients to tackle the challenges of today and tomorrow. Our creative and collaborative approach, grounded in research and data, enables impactful transformation of organizations, cultures, and environments, driving business performance.
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The idea of mentorship, cross-generational talent development, and knowledge transfer — and how you actually create spaces to allow that to happen — is becoming increasingly important.
—Kevin Rosenstein, Global Strategy Leader, Principal
27 Items
Standard Chartered Bank Future Workplace, Now.
Singapore
Standard Chartered Bank saw an opportunity to re-envision its workplace in response to demand for hybrid work and worked with Gensler on a visioning program.
Verizon Innovation Center Customer Experience Strategy
Boston, Massachusetts
Verizon’s Innovation Center, which spans three floors of its new Boston headquarters, is a destination that enables users and guests to be fully immersed.
The Future Experience of Work: Expand the Vision of What’s Possible
This global technology client enlisted Gensler to define ways in which its people and businesses could more nimbly adjust and flourish in this new hybrid world.
Activating the Workspace for Activity-Based Working: DBS Singapore
Singapore
DBS departed from its previous workplace model of fixed desks, to embrace a host of work settings that are tailored to the unique needs of employees and clients
Global Future Workforce Study
Microsoft needed to understand the motivations, expectations, and mindsets of future generations of talent to foster a forward-thinking culture and workplace.
Culture Strategy
Gensler’s culture strategy leverages the best facets of the design process, behavioral psychology, and development to transform an organization’s culture.
Gensler Vancouver
Vancouver, Canada
Gensler’s Vancouver office reimagines the modern workplace as a space for connection, collaboration, and wellbeing, blending local identity with a global vision — all while fostering a true sense of place.
Francis House, London HQ
London, United Kingdom
Edelman, a global communications firm, collaborated with Gensler to transform its London office into a curated work destination as part of its global strategy.
Designing for Mental Wellness
Singapore
The Gensler Singapore Community Impact Team partnered with Singapore Association for Mental Health on a pro bono interior design project for SAMH Space2Connect.
Designing Futures to Fuel Strategic Planning
Our Futures Thinking exercise answered strategic planning questions for a global aviation authority to develop scenarios to “future-proof” their business.
T-Mobile Headquarters Campus
Bellevue, Washington
T-Mobile’s renovated campus headquarters encompasses over 1,000,000 square feet of workspace designed to promote innovative strategy and collaboration.
UBC Faculty of Medicine Work(place) Evolution
Vancouver, British Columbia
UBC’s Faculty of Medicine needed to determine a workplace that would allow them to thrive and create a vision for evolving working styles, processes, and tools.
Workplace Transformation from Research to Realization
Singapore
Gensler was engaged to develop a comprehensive workplace strategy, design a hybrid-ready workplace, and execute a curated change management program.
Organon Culture Strategy
Organon engaged Gensler to co-create a culture strategy, with defined and lasting values and aspirations to support the employee experience across the globe.
Influencing Change for the Future of Work: L’Oréal
Singapore
L’Oréal sought to create the best conditions in their new One Singapore office building for nourishing company culture.
Capability Building
Gensler collaborates with organizations facing any type of disruption to their business, culture, and/or operations, to help them adapt and transform.
Verizon at The Hub
Boston, Massachusetts
Committing to Boston and its flourishing technology community, Verizon is the anchor tenant in the southern tower of The Hub on Causeway mixed-use development.
Futures
Gensler’s futures strategy is about projecting a vision of the future that we want live in by co-creating an inclusive process that represents diverse voices.
Willis Tower Repositioning
Chicago, Illinois
A new base design for Willis Tower turned unused spaces into a collection of mixed-use amenities and street life that reviving the iconic building.
Holt Renfrew Sustainable Guidelines
Toronto, Ontario
Canadian luxury department store chain Holt Renfrew tapped Gensler’s Climate Action & Sustainability consultants to develop its sustainable design and construction guidelines.
Humanyze
Boston, Massachusetts
Humanyze’s new office provides space for team growth and development, while still encouraging the flexibility and collaboration that is core to their start-up culture.
Confidential Technology Client
Santa Clara, California
This fast-growing cyber security company wanted this space to represent their next phase of growth while maintaining the openness of their start-up culture...
County of Sonoma Comprehensive County Facilities Plan
Sonoma County, California
With roughly two-million-square-feet of real estate fragmented over 72 locations, the County of Sonoma sought to shift from a mode of reactive...
Microsoft Scout
Dublin, Ireland
Microsoft consolidated its offices to connect 2,000 staff in one integrated location in a new office space in County Dublin, Ireland.
University of California, Office of the President, Workplace Study
Oakland, California
As headquarters for systemwide operations of the University of California, UCOP was facing increasing pressure to reduce operating costs while keeping pace...
San Francisco International Airport, REACH Program
San Francisco, California
The REACH Program is an aspirational and pragmatic guide to SFO’s long-term passenger experience, growth facilitation, improvement strategies, and operational efficiency.
Airbnb
San Francisco, California
Airbnb’s headquarters perfectly expresses the lodging and tourism company’s ethos of openness, collaboration, and constant enterprise and gives Airbnb’s employees continual freedom to choose where and how to work.
Services
Our multidisciplinary team captures critical insights to inform user-centric solutions across our service offerings.
Workplace Strategy
Through our human-centric and data-driven approach to developing workplace strategies, we ensure that physical space, technology, operations, and HR policies work in concert to support businesses and people. The result is a flexible, responsive workplace that drives engagement and is more resilient, adaptable, and inclusive.
Experience Strategy
Experience Strategy digs deep into a user’s needs and expectations, and builds a comprehensive plan that choreographs that user’s journey — including elements of the built environment, digital interactions, services, activations, communications, and content. We align the journey with a cultural or business purpose to drive impactful design solutions and user engagement.
Change Management
We help clients create a positive change experience by developing engagement strategies and tailored communications to ensure lasting results. We analyze organizational readiness and the impact of change on diverse audiences, build change coalitions, facilitate leadership alignment, and implement informative campaigns that celebrate opportunity and reinforce an organization’s brand and culture.
Futures
Our Futures practice leverages research tools to better understand, prepare for, and influence the future. We frame multiple plausible futures to guide strategy, allowing clients to unlock potential and plan amidst uncertainty. We identify futures by exploring transformative forces reshaping our world – technology, climate, economics, next-gen expectations. We then evaluate impacts on various aspects of an organization to inform future-ready design solutions.
Portfolio Analytics and Strategy
Our strategists leverage proprietary tools to create real estate portfolio strategies that are efficient, flexible, sustainable, and geared to drive business performance. This work extends from occupancy planning to larger scale facility master plans and is rooted in deep data analysis and scenario planning.
Public Engagement
Public engagement is our process for working collaboratively with affiliated groups to frame opportunities and co-create solutions that improve the well-being of the participants. We focus on creating equitable and inclusive engagement processes in the context of planning, development and strategy projects.
Design Guidelines
Our strategists and designers work together with clients to develop, publish, and maintain comprehensive guidelines that communicate process, design, and operational decisions for real estate. Implementation and governance of design guidelines can generate cost savings, streamline project delivery, reinforce brand, and inform a consistent user experience across a portfolio.
Research and Learning
We conduct deep research into the questions and challenges facing our clients. We then create multimedia educational materials for use with internal teams as well as research summaries to help generate insights for decision-making.
Market Analytics and Strategy
We balance the science, art, and business of design to help clients make informed real estate decisions. Our use of spatial data, demographics, local market conditions, and real estate performance data, enhances our ability to measure and forecast. We help to accurately interpret information, derive meaning, and develop plausible scenarios about what to build and where.
Strategic Planning
Leveraging our well-defined design process, we develop strategic plans that are guided by our client’s vision, mission, and values. This work is done through a co-development process with key stakeholders and includes aspects of organizational and business planning and program development.
INSIGHTS
Blog
Using Experience Strategy to Design What People Truly Want
By vividly depicting potential users early in the design process, the resulting room, building, or campus is more likely to meet their needs.
Blog
Strategy: The Unseen Partner for Workplace Design
Clients are looking to support talent through new policies, work point design choices, service design strategies, amenities, and locations.
Research
The Culture of Innovation Diagnostic
Gensler’s Culture Strategy team developed a diagnostic framework that uncovers the key factors to activate an intentional culture of innovation.
Blog
How Strategic Shifts Can Reignite Employee Engagement
In today’s workplace, employee engagement isn’t just a buzzword — it’s a vital force behind organizational success.
Blog
Doing More With Less: Designing Small Spaces for Big Impact
Right-sized workplaces are redefining what it means to be effective — and proving that good design is measured not in square footage, but in experience.
Blog
3 Overlooked Human Factors That Make-or-Break Mergers and Acquisitions
Organizations that integrate people, culture, and physical space into their M&A strategy can unlock lasting value.
Blog
How the Future of Work Is Influencing Workplace Design
While workplace design changes incrementally, the past few years radically transformed our expectations of an office and how we can design for what’s possible.
Blog
The New Club Workplace: More Than an Amenity
The next generation of tenants wants an experience-driven, unconventional shared amenity space, prompting landlords to rethink their offerings.
Research
Global Workplace Survey 2025
Gensler’s Global Workplace Survey 2025 reveals the importance of in-person work and insights on how workplaces can be better designed to support all forms of work for individuals and teams.
Blog
The Building as Brand: A Watershed Opportunity in Manhattan Office
As the city’s commercial real estate market undergoes unprecedented transformation, office space must be seen not as a commodity, but as a strategic investment with the potential to drive competitive advantage.
Blog
The Next Big Generation at Work May Not Be Who You Think
Historically, the fastest growing age group in the U.S. workforce has always been the upcoming generation. But not anymore.
Blog
Design Guidelines: The Most Powerful Tool in Your Real Estate Toolkit
Understanding a valuable tool that organizations can deploy to facilitate change in their real estate portfolio.
Blog
Three Principles for High-Impact Sustainable Design Guidelines
Translating sustainability commitments to design strategy.
Blog
Is Belonging the New Currency for Workplace Design?
By prioritizing belonging, we can create more impactful and transformative spaces that mitigate loneliness, foster connection, and drive value for people and organizations.
Blog
Repopulating the Workplace: Why Collaboration Space Is in Danger
Despite their value, collaboration spaces are often the first to go when companies are looking for ways to repopulate the workplace.
Trends in Strategy
How people use space, not days in the office, informs workplace design strategies.
The success of an office design will be based on dwell times for different types of work settings, meeting spaces, and gathering areas — analyzing data around how many people use a space and for how long.
Generational shifts reshape workplace strategy, design, and experience.
For the first time in history, workplaces will soon host up to six distinct generations concurrently. Differences in workplace preferences between younger and older workers will drive design decisions around everything from space type and amenities to technology integration and policies.
Computational modeling provides fresh insights about space and new ideas for strategy.
Advanced data analytics and computational models help companies think through workplace and real estate strategy questions, such as how policies and models can accommodate seasonal and weekly ebbs and flows in attendance and space usage
STRATEGY LEADERSHIP
Claudine Frasch
Strategy Leader, Studio Director, Principal
As a global leader of Gensler’s Strategy practice, Claudine Frasch partners with clients to build strategies for organizational innovation, employee experience.
Kevin Rosenstein
Strategy Leader, Studio Director, Principal
A global leader of Gensler’s Strategy practice, Kevin Rosenstein brings 25 years of diverse experience with specific expertise in organizational development, change management, and training.
Nayan Parekh
Work Sector Leader, Principal
As a global leader of Gensler’s Work Sector, Nayan Parekh partners with clients on their future of work and has successfully implemented workplace strategy and change management projects across Asia, the U.K., and Europe.
Lauren Adams
Creative Director, Strategy Director, Principal
Lauren Adams is the Creative Director for Gensler’s Northeast region who oversees the creative output across the region’s four offices.
Michael Adkins
Strategy Director
Based in Denver, Michael Adkins is a Strategy Leader for Gensler’s Southwest region, who believes government employees should have high-performing workplaces.
Elaine Asal
Strategy Director, Principal
Based in Baltimore, Elaine Asal is a Strategy practice area leader for Gensler’s Southeast region.
Shravan Bendapudi
Managing Director, Principal
Shravan Bendapudi is the Co-Managing Director of Gensler’s Mumbai office who provides business leadership and oversees the firm’s workplace projects in India.
Raquel Brenes
Strategy Leader
Raquel Brenes is a Strategy Leader at Gensler for the Latin America region, who partners with clients in Latin America and the U.S. to help execute their vision, drive performance, and enhance user engagement.
Elizabeth Brink
Co-CEO, Principal
Elizabeth Brink is Co-CEO of Gensler, the world’s most influential architecture and design firm. Together with Co-CEO Jordan Goldstein, she oversees both the long-term vision and day-to-day operations of the firm.
Michael Chappell
Strategy Director, Studio Director, Principal
Michael Chappell is a Strategy Director and Studio Director based in Gensler’s New York office. He leads the development of global strategies and local solutions for Fortune 500 organizations.
Jane Clay
Strategy Director, Principal
As a Strategy Director in Gensler’s London office, Jane Clay regularly advises clients on best practice workplace design.
Erin Cubbison
Strategy Director, Principal
Erin Cubbison is a Strategy Director in Gensler’s Oakland office with expertise in strategic consulting, user research, facilitation, and decision-making.
Alice Davis
Strategy Lead
As a Strategy Lead, Alice Davis leverages her experience to translate data from the broader market into actionable recommendations.
Sonya Dufner
Strategy Director, Principal
Sonya Dufner is a Director of Workplace Strategy at Gensler New York, who works with Fortune 100 clients to identify trends that impact business strategies.
Kevin Katigbak
Strategy Director, Principal
Kevin is a Principal and Strategy Director in Gensler’s Toronto office who leads teams that focus on developing real estate and workplace strategies.
Kate Kirkpatrick
Strategy Director, Studio Director, Principal
Kate is a Strategy Director and Studio Director in Gensler’s Washington, D.C. office.
Kelly Moore
Strategy Leader
Kelly Moore is a Strategy Director at Gensler Dallas who combines organizational strategy and workplace design to create highly productive work environments.
Patricia Nobre
Studio Director, Principal
Patricia Nobre leads a multi-disciplinary team dedicated to helping organizations thrive in times of change through design for a range of possible futures.
María Paula Sáenz
Strategy Director, Principal
María Paula Sáenz is a Strategy Director based Gensler Costa Rica who develops strategies for innovation, business transformation, and cultural change.
Johnathan Sandler
Media Leader, Strategy Director, Principal
Johnathan Sandler is a Media Leader and Strategy Director in Gensler New York who provides strategic planning and consulting services for Fortune 500 companies.
Jacob Simons
Strategy Director, Principal
Jacob Simons is a Strategy Leader for Gensler’s Northwest region, Studio Director, and Principal based in Gensler’s Seattle office.
Arlyn Vogelmann
Strategy Director, Principal
As co-leader of Gensler Boston’s Work Sector, Arlyn directs workplace strategy and design teams across four multidisciplinary studios while also helping to define the firm’s str...
NEWS
In The Media
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Crain's New York Business
How Strategically Repositioned Class B and C Buildings Can Help Meet NYC’s Converging Lease Needs
Crain’s New York Business published insights from Gensler Strategy Director Erin Saven examining a commercial lease cycle convergence that will reshape New York’s commercial real estate market and create opportunities for repositioning buildings to meet leasing needs.
June 27, 2025
In The Media
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Commercial Observer
Strategy Director Erin Saven Shared Insights on How Upcoming Lease Activity Offers an Opportunity To Rethink Real Estate Strategies
The tightening supply of new Class A office space is creating opportunities for tenants, developers, and brokers to explore unconventional locations and use office space as a tool for differentiation.
March 18, 2025
In The Media
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USA Today
Gensler and The Pew Charitable Trusts Study a Cost-Effective Approach to Converting Offices Into ‘Micro-Apartments’
Gensler Strategy Director Wes LeBlanc says that while details are being worked through, there is initial interest in conversations with developers and investors.
October 22, 2024
In The Media
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The Pew Charitable Trusts
Converting Office Buildings to Co-Living Dorm-Style Apartments Offers a More Economically Viable Solution
The Pew Charitable Trusts shared research published with Gensler on a more viable approach to office-to-residential conversions using a design that reduces construction costs and adds low rental housing in downtowns.
October 22, 2024
In The Media
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Work Design Magazine
3 Key Trends for Building an Intentional Workplace in 2024
Strategy Director Michael Chappell discussed how organizations will focus intentionally on building culture, leverage data to simulate future needs, and experiment to create a compelling experience.
December 22, 2023
In The Media
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WorkLife
Here’s What Matters for Optimizing Office Spaces for Today’s Needs
Janet Pogue McLaurin explains why spaces for individual work, for creative group work, and areas to reflect and restore are key for the office of today.
November 09, 2023
In The Media
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Forbes
Forbes Featured Findings From Gensler’s New U.S. Workplace Survey
Our survey data reveals the new reason 2,000 workers say they want to come into the office — to focus on getting their work done.
December 06, 2022
In The Media
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The Wall Street Journal
Cisco’s New Office Is “a Showcase of the Company’s Technology” and an Example of the Evolving Workplace
The Wall Street Journal took a video tour of Cisco’s office, which was redesigned by Gensler and optimized for facilitating hybrid work and data collection.
November 29, 2022
In The Media
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Financial Times
Privacy at Work and the Rise of the ‘Quiet Space’
Gensler’s Janet Pogue McLaurin addressed the demand for “quieter tech-free zones” to support focus work in the office, referencing designs for Cisco in New York and McCann in London.
November 28, 2022
In The Media
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Los Angeles Times
To Attract Workers Back to the Office, New Amenities Are Geared Towards Making the Workplace a Destination, Not an Obligation
Global Workplace Leader Elizabeth Brink explains how new amenities including mental health rooms, private decompression areas, and a choice of spaces are important to workers.
November 07, 2022
In The Media
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Urban Land Institute
Gensler co-CEO Andy Cohen Joins ULI Panel on the Right Path Forward for the Commercial Real Estate Industry
Andy Cohen addressed how office design improvements can focus on “making it a destination” and “an experience multiplier.”
October 28, 2022
In The Media
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Bloomberg
How Companies Are Reimagining Spaces to Support More Social Interaction Among Colleagues
Gensler co-CEO Diane Hoskins explains why organizations are prioritizing amenities that support social interaction — like Wi-Fi-enabled terraces, coffee bars, and pool tables.
October 25, 2022
In The Media
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Business Insider
Rethinking the Relationship Between Offices and Cities to Make the Office a Destination
Gensler’s Jordan Goldstein explains why the next revolution in office design will fuse residential, hospitality, and work, referencing Marriott’s new global headquarters.
October 24, 2022
In The Media
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The CEO Forum Group
Gensler Co-CEOs Share a Vision For What the Future of the Workplace Will Look Like
Andy Cohen and Diane Hoskins reflect on how changes to the office will positively impact workers and boost productivity.
October 21, 2022
In The Media
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Work Design Magazine
Gensler Consulting Leader Kelly Moore Shares Strategies to Engage, Excite, and Empower Employees Returning to the Workplace
Recognizing that everyone works differently, organizations are prioritizing providing new space types to create an effective experience.
October 16, 2022
In The Media
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CoreNet Global
CoreNet Global Featured Insights From Gensler Leaders on Transitioning Back to the Office
CoreNet Global shares advice on how clients can effectively plan, communicate, and attract employees to return to the office.
May 11, 2022