Spotlight Series

Real Estate Leader Spotlight Series: A conversation with Kim Alpert

August 8, 2024

Kim, thanks for joining us. What initially led you to Corporate Real Estate / Workplace?

Several of my early roles usually included a piece of operations here, space planning there or what was then called office management. As my career progressed, I found myself gravitating to companies and positions that were focused on growth and expansion and how the workplace teams support that growth.

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On the real estate side, I realized I didn’t want to just execute moves, but wanted a seat at the table from site selection and lease negotiation to buildouts, moves and decommissions. During my tenure at Castlight Health as my role evolved, I was able to take that seat and drive projects end to end.

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Tell us about your most recent role. What functions did you oversee? How large was the CRE team? Where did the department sit within the organization?

At Udemy, I managed a global workplace team and all real estate transactions. There wasn’t a specific CRE team, so I relied heavily on my team (which varied in size from 8 – 12 globally) for support and if any of them wanted to learn more about CRE and focus on that trajectory in their career, I was happy to help give them those same learning opportunities that I had early on. I also was lucky to have so many cross-collaborative teams at Udemy to help move these projects forward.

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Tell us about your portfolio. What did it look like?

Udemy’s HQ (+60k sqft) is in San Francisco. In Q4 of 2023, their portfolio included Denver, Dublin, Ankara, Istabul, Austin and Melbourne. Having joined Udemy in Q3 2019, I was able to help open their new Dublin office in January 2020, just before the pandemic shut us down.

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Denver and Ankara were projects managed by me almost entirely over zoom which was certainly a new experience for me – much learning to be had through that! I was so happy when I was finally able to go onsite with the hard hat and see the progress up close – zoom will never be able to take the place of onsite/in-person inspection and collaboration.

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Could you share a story of a project or initiative you spearheaded that had a major impact to how your team managed the portfolio?

The initiative that comes to mind first is co-leading the RTO cross-collaborative project for Udemy. This was a first for all of us and having to navigate us back from a pandemic (that wasn’t over) was a scary, challenging and super rewarding endeavor.

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The Workplace team, along with representatives from groups across the company, were tasked with bringing people back safely, following health guidelines, understanding what people were comfortable with and whether to require vaccinations, masks, etc. It was extremely complicated, and we relied on technology to create processes and systems that worked.

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What challenges do you see in the industry today? How do you think leaders need to evolve to address this?

I think the pandemic changed everything. As of March 2020, the workplace expanded to people’s homes, Starbucks, anywhere with an internet connection. We learned that employees can be as productive at home as at the office (sometimes more so), so we’ve had to do a hard pivot in the M-F, 9-5pm mindset.

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Because of that, some companies are reluctant to invest in expansion or even in their current footprint and executive teams are still trying to figure out to what degree they should mandate a return to a fully hybrid model.

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I think this will remain fluid for a long time and Workplace leaders need to continue to be flexible and updated on the trends so they can continue to service their companies effectively.

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What’s next for the industry? What are you most excited about?

It’s exciting for me to see companies returning, in some form, to a hybrid model and people back in offices in purposeful and collaborative ways. Workplace teams are still the most unsung yet valuable in any organization and as this new normal continues to evolve, that will not change.

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Currently, I’ve been contracted to project manage a move for a law firm on the Peninsula and it’s a big shift for me after many years in tech. I’m always energized by taking on new challenges and quickly learning that culture is important in any industry and prioritizing people and investing in places is key.

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