Blueprints and Breakthroughs Harvard Real Estate Review

Welcome to Season 2 of Harvard Real Estate Review's podcast series titled "Blueprints and Breakthroughs," where we interview innovators and industry experts to discuss the future of real estate by covering themes and ideas that sit at the intersection of real estate, design and technology - themes that will govern and revolutionize the industry over the next few decades. 
Co-hosts: Samika Jain (Harvard GSD MRE) and William Sutter (Harvard GSD MRE)

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. 

PropTech has been the buzzword in the real estate industry for the past few years. People are looking for ways to disrupt this traditional industry whether through revolutionizing ways of living, changing mode of operation, or coming up with new models of investments. Post the 2008 financial crisis, disruptions now known as Housing and Homebuilding 2.0 - such as prefabrication, 3D printing, and smart home - came to the forefront of the industry. As people always say, with crises and challenges comes opportunities. Since the COVID pandemic, willingly or unwillingly, our social norm and way of living is changing faster than ever. In this episode, we will take a closer look at the macroscopic housing and real estate trends and how investors and businesses adapt to these changes. 
This episode features a cross-disciplinary conversation between the following panelists and experts:
·        Chris Herbert (Managing Director at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies)
·        David Gerster (VP and Investor at JLL Spark Venture Fund)
·        Nicholas Donahue, (CEO and Founder at Atmos)
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.