WTF is Happening to the Office? Meet Our Experts

Rex Miller started his career as a project manager in the architecture and construction department for Southwestern Bell now AT&T, in 1978. He has worked as an owner, manufacturer, distributor and sub-contractor. His background has given Rex unique insight into the current and future challenges owners and providers face. He works at the intersection of numerous complex challenges including the common nightmare of delivering capital projects, workplace disengagement, toxic shadow cultures, workplace health, and well-being. Rex believes that healthy teams are the secret to strong teams. Rex has written numerous books including “The Commercial Real Estate Revolution: Nine Transforming Keys to Lowering Cost”; “Cutting Waste and Driving Change in a Broken Industry”; “Change Your Space, Change Your Culture”; “The Healthy Workplace Nudge and WHOLE”. He has won the CoreNet Global Innovator Award, Industry Excellence Award and IFMA’s Award for Excellence. Rex holds a master’s degree as a futurist and entered consulting after 25 years as a corporate leader. His unique experiences and skills allow Rex to guide leaders into new conversations forming new relationships that result in new realities. Some of his clients include Google, GoDaddy, Intel, MD Anderson, Atrium Health, UHS, DPR, FOX Architects, One Global Design, Haworth, and many others. When project teams hit a wall, owners will call on Rex Miller to quickly get to root issues, rebuild broken trust and realign the team around its mission. Rex lives in North Texas and recently celebrated 40 years of marriage, and has three children (almost off the payroll), and three dogs

Ryan Anderson serves as Vice President of Global Research and Insights at MillerKnoll. His team leads MillerKnoll’s research efforts in partnership with a wide variety of global collaborators and is active in sharing insights gained from that research with organizations across the world. With nearly thirty years of industry experience, Ryan’s work has centered on how the places we inhabit can be better designed and managed to support positive, productive experiences. Ryan hosts MillerKnoll’s Looking Forward podcast on the future of work, regularly speaks at public events about MillerKnoll’s historical and current research, and in addition to writing for Work Design, has been featured in wide variety of publications such as The Wall Street Journal, NPR, the BBC, Fortune, Bloomberg and beyond.

Larissa Conte founded Wayfinding in 2016 to equip leaders with enduring resources for embodying their sovereignty, following a life calling, and deepening their practice of Power that Serves the Whole.

She is an internationally-recognized leadership coach whose insights on power source from 20+ years of devoted interdisciplinary study, application, and lived experience. With rich experience as a global consultant, coach, healer, regenerative designer, rites of passage guide, and tracker, she’s excited to offer this custom synthesis of insights and tools only found at Wayfinding to advance Power that Serves the Whole.

Larissa has served leaders from around the world in startups to the Fortune 100 with deep experience of over 20,000+ hours as a coach. She brings her knowledge to life through transformative methodologies, experiences, and initiations for leaders from all walks of service that invite their greater wholeness to emerge. She was formerly the Chief Culture and Design Officer at Invisible, a Senior Associate at Lippincott, and the Chief Happiness Officer at The Quality of Life Foundation. Larissa has a self-designed M.S. from Stanford University in Cultural Philosophy of the Environment and a life Ph.D. having spent 11.5 years healing from a near-fatal accident.

Dean Stanberry has more than 20 years of broad-based experience in facility management, real estate portfolio management, process and quality improvement, procurement, workplace services, program and project management, space and occupancy planning, sustainability, information systems implementation, and critical environment operations. 

He is an active industry advocate, serving on the IFMA Foundation Board of Trustees, is past chair of the Environmental Stewardship, Utilities, and Sustainability (ESUS) Community, and chairs the Government Affairs Committee. Dean is currently 1st Vice-Chair of IFMA’s Global Board of Directors.

Melissa Fisher is a cultural anthropologist and has extensive experience studying and consulting on organizations, workplace culture, and the built environment. She takes a human-centric and inclusive approach to designing workspaces and culture, using ethnographic skills to understand and optimize how people navigate working in physical and digital environments. Prior to become an anthropologist, she worked in dance, theater, and graphic design. These experiences trained her to think about ways of connecting people, place, movement, and design.

Melissa has actively bridged business and academia throughout her career. She has published two books, Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the New Economy (2006) and Wall Street Women (2012). She is currently working on a book called “Anthropology, Ethnography, and the Global Reimagining of Work,” which explores how workplace experts shape future work environments in the context of pandemics, with a focus on equity and justice. Her work has been featured in publications such as The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, NPR, and the BBC. She has also delivered hundreds of keynote speeches and talks worldwide.

Melissa is a Senior Advisor at CFAR Consulting and Coaching Services where she focuses on workplace culture and design. She is also affiliated with New York University’s Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University’s School of Professional Studies, the Global Foresight Project based out the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies, and the Conference Board. She holds a B.A from Barnard College, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University.

Dave Gilmore is the President & Chief Executive Officer of DesignIntelligence. He is a frequent university lecturer as well as corporate speaker across the Built Environment industry. His work involves frequent interaction with leadership teams and governance entities regarding leadership transition, business sustainability, and organizational resilience. He serves as a strategic advisor to many of the largest and most successful Built Environment industry firms in the United States. Dave is also the Founder and Managing Director of The Tricord Group, a boutique equity fund with partners in Atlanta, Boston, and Minneapolis. 

Ryan Luby is an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company. A leader of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), Ryan leads MGI’s applied research on macroeconomics in North America. His recent work includes a dynamic view of economic sentiment via the American Opportunity Survey, with an eye towards understanding the impact on the most vulnerable populations. In addition, he drives McKinsey’s perspective at the intersection of labor markets and real estate, including a view on labor shortage along the construction value chain. Ryan serves clients along the real estate value chain, in the public sector, and investors. He partners with clients to understand the macro forces shaping their operating environment and developing actionable, go-forward perspectives.

Phil is a senior expert and associate partner in the firm’s Real Estate and People & Organizational Performance Practices. He has led multiple large-scale workplace transformations, and is passionate about measuring the outcomes of workplace design, occupancy, and activation choices on business objectives and employee experience.

Prior to McKinsey, Phil had 20 years of experience across the disciplines of information security, operational risk, expense management and corporate real estate. His workplace strategy career began when he cocreated an industry-leading “smart working” program for a global financial-services firm that improved employee engagement, reduced voluntary attrition, and increased building capacity for over 15,000 staff in seven countries.

Adam is Frameable’s Chief Executive Officer, and an experienced executive and investor in e-commerce, finance, and media companies. Adam was the first President and CFO of Shutterstock from 2005 to 2010, and in the last 20 years has built, invested in, and advised companies achieving the full range of outcomes, from successful exits to disappointing bankruptcies, learning a great deal from each of them. Beyond work, he’s a proud father and husband, and a bona fide jazz nut.

Bill Browning, BED Colorado University, MSRED MIT, Hon. AIA, LEED AP, is the Managing Partner at Terrapin Bright Green, an environmental strategies research and consulting firm. His clients include Disney, New Songdo City, Lucasfilm, Google, Marriott, Bank of America, Salesforce, the Inn of the Anasazi, the White House, and the Sydney 2000 Olympic Village. Bill was a founding member of the USGBC Board of Directors.  He began research in human productivity and green buildings in the 1990s at Rocky Mountain Institute and is co-author of Greening the Building and the Bottom Line (1994), The Economics of Biophilia (2012, and 2023), 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design (2104), Human Spaces 2.0 Biophilic Design in Hospitality (2017), and Nature Inside (2020). His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Elle Popular Science, and in segments by NPR, Reuters, CNN, and PBS.

Leigh Stringer is the Global Director of Advisory Services at Perkins&Will. She is a workplace strategy expert and researcher whose work has been covered by a range of news media, including Fortune, CNN, BBC, and Good Morning America. She is the author of two bestselling books, The Green Workplace and The Healthy Workplace. Leigh has been a keynote/featured speaker in front of audiences ranging from dozens to thousands, including CoreNet, the Urban Land Institute (ULI), the International Facilities management Association (IFMA), the American Institute of Architects (AIA), Health Care Design, the Society for College and University Planners (SCUP), Women in Construction, the Center for Workplace Innovation, the Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO), the U.S. Green Building Council and many others. Leigh works with a wide range of clients, including corporate, government, higher education and healthcare, to help them create sustainable and high-performing workplace environments that enhance well-being and human performance. Leigh is featured in a recent documentary called The Workplace Garden, which centers around the stresses and challenges of our modern work-life, produced by Conscious Content Media. She just launched an ongoing seminar with the American Management Association called “Improving Employee Well-Being in Your Organization: Ensure better engagement, retention and acquisition as a “whole health” organization.”