40 Essential Thought Leaders in Workplace Design

The office is not in crisis. It is in transformation. And the people compiled here are the ones doing the transforming.

Workplace design has moved far beyond aesthetics. The discipline now sits at the intersection of behavioural science, organisational strategy, sustainability, data analytics, neuroscience, and cultural change. The best practitioners in this field are not simply specifying furniture or drawing floor plans. They are reimagining how human beings experience work, how organisations attract and retain people, and how physical space either enables or erodes the things that matter most: connection, focus, creativity, and belonging.

The evidence for the importance of this work keeps growing. Gensler's 2025 Global Workplace Survey found that only 38 percent of employees globally strongly agree their workplace provides a great experience. Separate research from the Gensler 2026 Global Workplace Survey found that 43 percent of employees sometimes cancel meetings because there is no available meeting room. Meanwhile, data from the Leesman Index, drawn from more than 1.5 million employee responses, shows a global average workplace experience score of 69.5 out of 100 against a homeworking benchmark of 79.5.

That gap is not a verdict on the office. It is an invitation.

This list brings together 40 of the most important voices shaping the response to that invitation. It spans researchers and data scientists, environmental psychologists and biophilic designers, workplace strategists and change consultants, neuroinclusion specialists and authors.

Some lead teams at global firms. Others work independently, writing books and building movements. All of them are contributing something the field genuinely needs.

A note on scope: this list focuses on workplace design in the corporate, institutional, and organisational sense. It does not cover residential, hospitality, or retail interior design. The thread connecting everyone here is a commitment to how people experience the spaces where they work.

If you lead an organisation navigating a significant workplace transition, the ideas and research in this list are a good place to start. And if you are looking for someone to facilitate the leadership and team alignment work that sits alongside any great physical transformation, Jonno White of Clarity Group Global works with organisations across a wide range of industries on exactly that. Reach him at jonno@consultclarity.org.

Category 1: Workplace Research and Data Pioneers

The voices in this category have built the evidence base that serious workplace design rests on. Their surveys, indices, and research programmes give organisations the data they need to make the case for investment and the insight to direct it well.

1. Janet Pogue McLaurin

Global Director, Workplace Research and Principal, Gensler  |  USA

Janet Pogue McLaurin leads Gensler's global workplace research practice, overseeing the annual Global Workplace Survey that has become one of the most cited sources of data on how employees experience the spaces they work in. Her work sits at the meeting point of design strategy and organisational performance, helping clients understand not just what their people want from a workplace but why it matters to the bottom line.

As a principal and researcher, she brings both academic rigour and practitioner experience to questions that are often asked but rarely answered with precision: what makes a great workplace? What is the relationship between spatial experience and productivity? What do people actually need when they come into the office?

Her research has shaped how Gensler approaches workplace design globally, and her writing and speaking on workplace performance have influenced thinking across the corporate real estate and design industries. For leaders trying to make data-driven decisions about their physical environments, her work offers some of the most useful evidence available.

2. Diane Hoskins

Global Co-Chair, Gensler  |  USA

Diane Hoskins has co-led Gensler, the world's largest architecture and design firm, for two decades. As one of two Global Co-Chairs, she oversees a practice of more than 6,000 people across 56 offices serving clients in over 100 countries. She is also the founding force behind the Gensler Research Institute, which produces the firm's landmark Global Workplace Survey and its Workplace Performance Index.

Her 2024 book, co-authored with fellow Co-Chair Andy Cohen, is titled Design for a Radically Changing World. In it, the pair make the case that design is not a luxury but a strategic necessity for organisations navigating accelerating disruption. Hoskins brings to the book a conviction shaped by two decades of leading a global firm: that the built environment has the power to bring people together, elevate human experience, and give organisations a foundation for their best work.

Hoskins has spoken at the United Nations' Habitat Assembly and the UN Climate Action Summit, and has been named to CNBC's Changemakers list. She serves on the boards of Boston Properties and the Real Estate Roundtable. Her influence on how corporate leaders think about design as a strategic lever rather than a cost centre has been substantial and continuing.

Note: Design for a Radically Changing World (2024) is co-authored by Diane Hoskins and Andy Cohen.

3. Ryan Anderson

Vice President, Global Research and Planning, MillerKnoll  |  USA

Ryan Anderson leads research and planning at MillerKnoll, one of the world's leading commercial furniture and design companies, and brings to the workplace conversation a perspective grounded in how people actually work rather than how organisations imagine they do. His research focuses on the intersection of place, technology, and human behaviour.

His writing and speaking draw on a combination of MillerKnoll's own research, academic literature, and years of close observation of how workers use and experience the spaces they occupy. He is particularly good at translating complex research findings into practical implications for designers, HR leaders, and facilities managers.

As the workplace debate has evolved from a consensus about open-plan offices toward a much more contested discussion about what the office is actually for, Anderson has been a consistent voice of nuance, arguing for evidence over trend and asking harder questions about what the research actually supports.

4. Peggie Rothe

Chief Insights and Research Officer, Leesman  |  Finland

Peggie Rothe is the Chief Insights and Research Officer at Leesman, the organisation behind the Leesman Index, probably the most widely cited independent benchmark for workplace experience in the world. The index is built from more than 1.5 million employee responses across thousands of organisations globally, giving it a scale and credibility that few other research programmes can match.

In her role, Rothe leads the analysis and communication of what Leesman's data reveals about how employees experience their workplaces. She has become one of the most authoritative voices on the gap between what organisations believe they are providing and what employees actually experience, particularly around activity-based working and hot-desking.

The finding that the global average workplace experience score sits at 69.5 against a homeworking benchmark of 79.5 is the kind of data point that tends to change conversations quickly when shared in a leadership team. Rothe's work provides the rigour behind that number and many others like it.

5. Tim Oldman

Co-founder and Co-CEO, Aeto (formerly founder of Leesman)  |  UK

Tim Oldman founded the Leesman Index in 2010 with a simple but radical idea: what if organisations could actually measure whether their workplaces were working? Over the following decade, Leesman grew into the global standard for workplace experience measurement, accumulating data from millions of employees across dozens of countries.

Oldman has since co-founded Aeto, where he continues to work on the challenge of helping organisations understand and improve the relationship between their people and their physical environments. His thinking on workplace measurement, post-occupancy evaluation, and the gap between design intent and lived experience has been formative for the field.

He is a consistent voice against the untested assumptions that have historically driven too many workplace decisions, arguing that the field needs more honesty about what the evidence actually shows and less reliance on what feels directionally right.

6. Philip Tidd

Principal and Regional Client Relationships Leader, Gensler Europe (Munich)  |  Germany

Philip Tidd founded Gensler's Munich office in 2018 and later opened the firm's Berlin studio in 2022, giving him a close view of how European workplace culture, regulation, and design thinking intersect. Based in Munich and operating across the wider European region, he works with global organisations trying to translate workplace strategy into culturally appropriate and regulation-ready physical environments.

His work draws on Gensler's Global Workplace Survey and Workplace Performance Index, and he is particularly focused on what he calls 'magnetic cities', places where talent and quality of life converge to make the office genuinely attractive rather than merely obligatory. His thinking on the relationship between workplace design and urban vitality is distinctive and increasingly relevant as organisations decide where to locate their people.

Tidd's articles and conference presentations have explored how Germany's approach to workplace design differs from Anglo-American norms, how organisations can design for a workforce that has genuine choices about where to work, and what Gensler's research data means for European occupiers.

7. Kerstin Sailer

Professor in the Sociology of Architecture, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture  |  UK

Kerstin Sailer is one of the leading academic researchers working on the relationship between spatial design and social behaviour in the built environment. As a professor at the UCL Bartlett's Space Syntax Laboratory, she investigates how the layout and configuration of buildings shapes the way people interact, collaborate, and experience their work.

Her research spans offices, hospitals, schools, and laboratories, and she brings to workplace design a level of methodological rigour that practitioner conversations often lack. Her work on how floor plans structure social interaction, how desk characteristics influence perceptions of teamwork and focused work, and how hybrid working has shifted spatial preferences has generated findings that challenge some widely held assumptions about what makes a good workplace.

She reviewed Kay Sargent's 2025 Wiley book on neuroinclusive workplaces for the journal Buildings and Cities, calling it a contribution that fills an important gap for scholars and practitioners alike. Her peer-reviewed publications are cited by researchers and practitioners who want evidence-based foundations for design decisions.

Category 2: Wellbeing, Biophilic and Sensory Design

The people in this category have made the wellbeing of the humans who occupy spaces their central concern. They draw on environmental psychology, biophilic design, sensory research, and sustainable design principles to argue that how a space feels is not incidental but fundamental.

8. Oliver Heath

Founder and Director, Oliver Heath Design  |  UK

Oliver Heath is one of the most visible advocates for biophilic design in the English-speaking world. His firm Oliver Heath Design has helped a wide range of organisations understand and implement the principle that human beings function better when they have meaningful contact with nature in their built environments.

His speaking and writing have made biophilia accessible to corporate audiences that might otherwise dismiss it as an aesthetic trend. He demonstrates through research and case studies that exposure to natural light, greenery, natural materials, and patterns drawn from the natural world has measurable effects on wellbeing, creativity, and cognitive function.

Heath's work sits at the intersection of design, psychology, and sustainability, and he has collaborated with major commercial organisations, developers, and design firms to bring biophilic principles into mainstream practice. His accessible, evidence-referenced approach has helped shift biophilic design from a niche interest to a standard component of serious workplace briefs.

9. Lily Bernheimer

Founding Director, Space Works Consulting; Environmental Psychologist  |  USA

Lily Bernheimer is an environmental psychologist whose 2018 book The Shaping of Us: How Everyday Spaces Structure Our Lives, Behaviour, and Well-Being brought the academic discipline of environmental psychology to a general audience with unusual clarity and warmth. The book explores how the spaces people inhabit shape behaviour, identity, and psychological experience in ways most people never consciously register.

Through her consultancy Space Works Consulting, Bernheimer has applied environmental psychology to a wide range of real-world design challenges, including wellbeing in co-working spaces, workplace strategy, and prison design (her research on wellbeing in prison design won the 2018 RIBA President's Award for Research in Ethics and Sustainable Development).

Her writing for Psychology Today and other publications has helped build broader public literacy around the psychological dimensions of design, and her work is particularly useful for HR and people leaders who want to understand why the physical environment matters for employee experience at a deeper level than aesthetics or ergonomics.

10. Nigel Oseland

Founder and Managing Director, Workplace Unlimited; Environmental Psychologist  |  UK

Nigel Oseland is an environmental psychologist, workplace strategist, and one of Europe's most consistent and credible voices on the science of workplace design. As founder of Workplace Unlimited and co-founder of the Workplace Trends conference, he has spent decades working at the intersection of psychological science and physical environment.

His research on the relationship between personality and workplace preference, on the effects of noise and acoustic design on cognitive performance, and on the psychology of activity-based working has challenged many comfortable assumptions that drive workplace decisions. He is particularly effective at pushing back against homogeneous design approaches that treat the average person as the only person, ignoring the significant variation in how different individuals experience the same space.

Oseland is a visiting research fellow at Liverpool John Moores University, a regular conference keynote speaker, and a prolific blogger whose work is widely read across the property, facilities management, and design communities.

11. Leigh Stringer

Director of Global Advisory Services, Perkins and Will  |  USA

Leigh Stringer brings together three disciplines that rarely sit comfortably in one person: architecture and design, sustainability, and human performance science. As Director of Global Advisory Services at Perkins and Will, she works with organisations on workplace challenges that require all three, helping clients design spaces that perform well for people, organisations, and the environment simultaneously.

She is the author of books on workplace wellness and healthy buildings, and her writing has made her one of the more accessible communicators on the research linking physical environment to human health outcomes. She draws on neuroscience, environmental health, and workplace strategy to make the case that healthy buildings are not a nice-to-have but a competitive asset.

Stringer's experience spans a wide range of project types, and her work at Perkins and Will has extended her platform for applying that thinking at scale. She is a regular speaker at industry events and a contributor to the broader conversation about what a high-performance workplace actually means when you take human health seriously.

12. Phil Ross

Founder and CEO, UnGroup (UnWork, WORKTECH, WORKTECH Academy); Author  |  UK

Philip Ross co-founded the WORKTECH conference series with Jeremy Myerson in 2003, creating what has since become the world's leading global event series for professionals working at the intersection of work, workplace, technology, and design. He is founder and CEO of UnGroup, which comprises UnWork.com, Unwired Ventures, WORKTECH, and WORKTECH Academy, alongside the Cordless Group consultancy.

His 2022 book, Unworking: The Reinvention of the Modern Office, co-authored with Jeremy Myerson and published by Reaktion Books, offers a panoramic view of the forces reshaping the office and proposes a manifesto for unlearning the habits and assumptions baked into the modern workplace. The book draws on decades of research, case studies, and direct engagement with the organisations and individuals driving workplace change globally.

Ross is a futurist in the precise sense: he specialises in the impact of emerging technology on ways of working, and his thinking on the relationship between digital infrastructure and physical space has influenced how a generation of organisations approach workplace strategy. His white papers and research for clients including Microsoft, Intel, and McKinsey have shaped how those organisations think about the future of work.

13. Kirsti Simpson

Principal and Studio Chair, Brisbane; Global Sector Leader, Workplace Interiors, Woods Bagot  |  Australia

Kirsti Simpson leads workplace interiors globally for Woods Bagot, one of Australia's most internationally active architecture and design firms. As both Studio Chair for the Brisbane practice and Global Sector Leader for Workplace Interiors, she operates at the intersection of design practice and strategic leadership, helping the firm translate workplace research into built outcomes across a wide range of projects and geographies.

Her work reflects a genuine interest in how people experience space over time, not just at the moment of completion but as the rhythms of organisational life play out within it. She has been involved in significant workplace projects across the Asia Pacific region and contributes regularly to industry conversations about the future of the office in post-pandemic urban environments.

For anyone interested in how the workplace design conversation is developing in the Asia Pacific region, and in how a global firm navigates the tension between international design trends and local cultural and climatic conditions, Simpson's perspective is valuable and distinctive.

Category 3: Neuroinclusion and Designing for Diverse Minds

The voices here are working on one of the most important and most overlooked dimensions of workplace design: the fact that not everyone experiences space the same way. Neurodivergent individuals make up approximately one in five of the global population and often find that standard office environments create barriers rather than support. The people in this category are working to change that.

14. Kay Sargent

Director of Thought Leadership, Interiors, HOK  |  USA

Kay Sargent is one of the most influential practitioners working on the intersection of workplace design, neurodiversity, and neuroinclusion in the built environment. With four decades of experience as a licensed interior designer, she serves as Director of Thought Leadership, Interiors, at HOK.

Her 2025 book, Designing Neuroinclusive Workplaces: Advancing Sensory Processing and Cognitive Well-Being in the Built Environment, published by Wiley, is the most comprehensive practitioner-facing treatment of neuroinclusion in workplace design currently available. It explores how strategic spatial zoning, sensory design, lighting, acoustics, patterns, textures, and colour can be used to create environments that work for the approximately one in five people who are neurodivergent, as well as for neurotypical people whose cognitive function is also shaped by the sensory qualities of their environment.

Sargent sits on the Delos Advisory Board alongside leading wellness and sustainability advocates and won the IFMA Distinguished Author Award for her research on neurodiversity. Her work is an essential reference for any organisation serious about designing spaces that work for all of its people rather than an imagined average.

15. Jessica Bantom

Global Leader for Equity, Diversity and Belonging, DLR Group; Author  |  USA

Jessica Bantom is a DEIB practitioner, interior design consultant, and author whose work asks a question the design profession has historically been slow to answer: if designers say they design for everyone, why do so many spaces fail to accommodate people from diverse cultural, racial, ethnic, and social backgrounds?

Her 2023 book, Design for Identity: How to Design Authentically for a Diverse World, offers a framework for cultural competence in design practice. It argues that meaningful inclusion in the built environment requires designers to understand identity, to engage directly with the communities they are designing for, and to develop the kind of cultural awareness that makes it possible to create spaces that genuinely resonate rather than merely accommodate.

As Global Leader for Equity, Diversity and Belonging at DLR Group, she applies these principles at organisational scale. She was named to the International Advisory Council of the Design Management Institute in 2025. Her perspective is an important corrective to workplace design conversations that treat diversity as an afterthought.

16. Collin Burry

Design Principal, Gensler London  |  UK (USA-origin)

Collin Burry is a Design Principal in Gensler's London office, having relocated from San Francisco where he spent 25 years building one of the most distinctive design practices in North American workplace design. A Fellow of the International Interior Design Association and a 2013 inductee into the Interior Design Hall of Fame, he brings a level of design craft and intellectual rigour to workplace projects that is relatively rare.

His work at Gensler London has connected American workplace design thinking with European sensibilities, and he has become a regular presence at major industry events. He appeared at the 2026 Workspace Design Show alongside Helen Berresford and Nicola Gillen in a panel examining how shifting work patterns and culture are redefining architecture and design.

His interest in the neurodiversity and sensory experience dimensions of design, combined with his practice at the highest level of commercial design, makes him a distinctive voice in a field that sometimes privileges measurement over meaning.

17. Marie Puybaraud

Executive Director, Research, JLL (Paris)  |  France

Dr Marie Puybaraud has led JLL's corporate real estate research programme since 2015 and has built it into one of the most influential sources of workplace research in the global property industry. Based in Paris, she leads a global team of researchers investigating the entire corporate real estate life cycle, from the built environment and facilities management to workplace innovation, technology, and generational dynamics.

Her work on human experience in the workplace, developed at JLL through nine client workshops, became a significant framework for how corporate real estate professionals think about the relationship between space and people. It has influenced how a generation of workplace strategists approach occupier needs.

Puybaraud is a PhD engineer and a Trustee of the IFMA Foundation. She has presented research findings to more than 300 corporate clients annually and has spoken at major global conferences including the MIT World Real Estate Forum, WORKTECH, CoreNet, and IFMA.

18. Jeremy Myerson

Chairman, WORKTECH Academy; Professor Emeritus, Royal College of Art  |  UK

Jeremy Myerson is one of the most prolific and widely read authors working on workplace design and the future of work. He co-founded the WORKTECH conference series with Philip Ross in 2003 and later founded WORKTECH Academy in 2016 as the global knowledge platform for the future of work and workplace. He holds the Helen Hamlyn Chair of Design at the Royal College of Art, where he is Professor Emeritus.

His 2022 book, Unworking: The Reinvention of the Modern Office, co-authored with Philip Ross and published by Reaktion Books, offers a panoramic and historically grounded account of the forces reshaping the office and proposes a manifesto for unlearning the assumptions that have historically defined how organisations think about workspace. It has been widely praised as the most important book on the office published in the post-pandemic period.

Myerson has published more than 20 books over a career that began in design journalism (he founded Design Week magazine in 1986). His ability to synthesise a wide range of disciplines and make complex ideas accessible to broad audiences has made him one of the field's most effective communicators.

Category 4: Workplace Strategy and Occupier Consulting

The consultants and strategists in this category work at the sharp end: helping organisations make decisions about their physical environments that align with business strategy, culture, and people needs. Their work requires holding the tension between evidence, organisational context, and the realities of budget, timeline, and leadership appetite for change.

19. Nicola Gillen

Head of Strategic Consulting EMEA, Cushman and Wakefield  |  UK

Nicola Gillen is an architect, author, and workplace strategist who leads strategic consulting across EMEA at Cushman and Wakefield. Her work focuses on the relationship between design, behaviour, and the built environment, combining the analytical rigour of an architect with the organisational perspective of a change strategist.

Her 2023 book, Reworking the Workplace: Connecting People, Purpose and Place, co-authored with Richard Pickering, Sophie Schuller, and Zoe Humphries and published by RIBA Publishing, is one of the most thorough practitioner guides to workplace strategy currently available. It covers hybrid work, portfolio optimisation, culture, and change management, grounded in real case studies and evidence.

She appeared at the 2026 Workspace Design Show alongside Collin Burry and Mark Eltringham in a panel on how shifting work patterns are redefining architecture and workplace design. Her perspective consistently connects the physical to the organisational in ways that help clients see their workspace decisions as part of a larger strategic picture.

20. Despina Katsikakis

Executive Partner, Global Head of Total Workplace, Cushman and Wakefield  |  UK / Greece

Despina Katsikakis is one of the most experienced and respected voices in global workplace consulting. As Executive Partner and Global Head of Total Workplace at Cushman and Wakefield, she has spent nearly four decades leading innovation, research, and implementation of transformative workplace environments for some of the world's largest organisations.

Her work has consistently placed human experience at the centre of workplace strategy, arguing long before it became fashionable that the measure of a great workplace is not its design awards but whether the people who use it feel it supports them in doing their best work. Her thinking on the office as destination, on workplace as a talent tool, and on the organisational dynamics that determine whether a transformation succeeds or fails has influenced a generation of practitioners.

Katsikakis has spoken at virtually every major event in the field and is widely recognised among corporate real estate professionals as one of the most credible and intellectually serious voices in the industry.

21. Melissa Marsh

Founder and Executive Director, PLASTARC  |  USA

Melissa Marsh is the founder of PLASTARC, a workplace research and strategy consultancy positioned as one of the most rigorous and people-centred practices in the field. Her background spans architecture, social science, and organisational change, and PLASTARC's methodology reflects that breadth, combining data analytics, behavioural research, and change management.

Her work is particularly notable for its commitment to involving the people who use spaces in the process of designing them, pushing back against a design culture that too often treats occupants as passive recipients of decisions made by others. She has built PLASTARC around the idea that workplace experience can and should be measured, understood, and continuously improved.

Marsh is a regular speaker at CoreNet, IFMA, and other major industry events and has written extensively on workplace analytics, post-occupancy evaluation, and the use of data in workplace decision-making.

22. Angie Earlywine

Americas Lead, Total Workplace, Cushman and Wakefield  |  USA

Angie Earlywine leads the Total Workplace practice for the Americas at Cushman and Wakefield, working with organisations across a wide range of sectors to develop workplace strategies that align their physical environments with business objectives, culture, and workforce expectations.

Her work sits at the intersection of real estate strategy and human experience, and she brings to client engagements a practical intelligence about the organisational dynamics that determine whether a workplace transformation actually lands. She has worked with significant clients on complex portfolio decisions, hybrid work strategy, and the change management that determines whether a new space is embraced or resisted.

Her perspective reflects a central reality of the post-pandemic workplace: that the office needs to earn its place in the working lives of employees who now have genuine alternatives, and that organisations which succeed will be those that invest seriously in understanding what their people actually need from a shared space.

23. Anna Alm-Grayhek

Principal and Director of Workplace Strategy, Hendy  |  USA

Anna Alm-Grayhek has spent nearly three decades planning and designing commercial offices for a client roster including major corporations across technology, consumer goods, and automotive sectors. As Principal and Director of Workplace Strategy at Hendy, she leads a practice that integrates activity-based planning, technology, and behavioural change to help organisations create workplaces that support the full range of what their people need to do.

Her writing for Work Design Magazine and the Orange County Business Journal has addressed some of the most pressing questions in workplace strategy: how organisations can design for a genuinely hybrid workforce, how Gen Z is reshaping expectations of the office, and how the relationship between physical environment and employee engagement can be made more intentional and evidence-based.

Grayhek is both a certified Change Practitioner and a licensed interior designer (IIDA, LEED AP), and her ability to think about both the spatial and the cultural dimensions of workplace change makes her a particularly useful voice for organisations navigating significant transitions.

24. Neil Usher

Chief Workplace and Change Strategist, GoSpace AI; Author  |  UK

Neil Usher spent nearly 30 years as a corporate real estate and workplace leader at organisations including Warner Bros., Honeywell, Rio Tinto, and Sky before becoming Chief Workplace and Change Strategist at GoSpace AI. In that journey he accumulated an unusual combination of practitioner experience and intellectual depth that found expression in three books: The Elemental Workplace (2018), Elemental Change (2020), and Unf*cking Work.

The Elemental Workplace is organised around 12 elements Usher argues are necessary and sufficient for a great workplace. The book is notable for its refusal to accommodate the idea that a fantastic workplace is a privilege for the lucky few, arguing instead for a standard all organisations can aspire to achieve regardless of budget.

His writing, blogging, and speaking are consistently honest, often sharp, and always grounded in the view that the gap between what organisations say about their workplaces and what the people in them actually experience is too large to explain away. His current work at GoSpace AI adds a technological dimension, exploring how data and AI can help organisations allocate space in ways that bring people together more effectively.

25. Steve Henigan

Founder and CEO, HCG  |  UK

Steve Henigan founded HCG to deliver workplace consultancy and change management for organisations navigating significant workplace transformations. He is the past chair of the CoreNet UK Workplace community, was named Business Person of the Year at the 2025 London SME Business Awards, and features in the Workplace Leaders Top 50 for 2024.

His work for clients spans workplace strategy, feasibility studies, hybrid work implementation, and the kind of change management that bridges the gap between a new physical environment and the cultural shifts required to make it work. He presents regularly at RICS, IFMA, BIFM, and CoreNet events and has published research exploring the relationship between workplace design, wellbeing, productivity, and organisational performance.

Henigan's perspective is grounded in the realities of British and European corporate culture, and his experience across both private sector organisations and the facilities management community gives him a practical and commercial sensibility that complements the more research-oriented voices in this list.

26. Mariola Bitner

Head of Workplace Strategy and Technical Advisory, Poland and CEE, Cushman and Wakefield  |  Poland

Mariola Bitner is a senior workplace strategist with 19 years of experience shaping high-performance workplace environments for global corporations across Central and Eastern Europe. As Head of Workplace Strategy and Technical Advisory for Poland and CEE at Cushman and Wakefield, she has become one of the most recognised experts in the region on how organisations in the Polish and broader CEE market can design workplaces that support hybrid work, drive cultural alignment, and deliver measurable business results.

Her work spans the definition of workplace strategy, the championing of organisational culture through space, and the oversight of full-cycle office transformations for sites of over 1,000 employees. As a certified Change Manager, she has a particular focus on the human dimensions of workplace change, helping organisations navigate the transition from traditional office environments to more flexible and activity-based models.

Bitner is a distinctive voice for a region underrepresented in global workplace design conversations despite being home to some of the most dynamic corporate real estate markets in Europe. Her perspective on how global workplace trends translate (and sometimes do not) into Eastern European organisational culture is valuable for any practitioner or occupier working across the region.

Category 5: Authors, Thinkers and Futurists

The people in this category are primarily known as writers, thinkers, and public intellectuals who have shaped how the wider world thinks about work and the spaces in which it happens. Their books and ideas have reached beyond the design and real estate industry to influence how HR leaders, CEOs, policymakers, and working people themselves think about the relationship between space, culture, and human flourishing.

27. Julia Hobsbawm

Founder and CEO, Workathon; Author  |  UK

Julia Hobsbawm has been described by a Harvard Kennedy School fellow as 'our foremost futurist of the workplace', and it is a description she has earned through a consistent track record of being right about things before most people noticed they were changing. Her 2022 book The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future anticipated the hybrid work debate in ways that subsequent events have largely vindicated.

Her 2024 book, Working Assumptions: What We Thought We Knew About Work Before Covid and Generative AI and What We Know Now, is a clear-eyed account of how the twin disruptions of the pandemic and generative AI have changed the assumptions organisations, workers, and policymakers make about work. It covers jobs, skills, the workplace, culture, wellbeing, and generational attitudes with breadth and accessibility that serious business books rarely achieve.

Hobsbawm is founder and CEO of Workathon, a work trends and change network, and founder of The World Work Organisation. She is a regular Bloomberg and BBC contributor and a sought-after keynote speaker. For anyone trying to understand the macro forces reshaping work before they arrive, she is one of the most reliable guides available.

28. Mark Eltringham

Publisher, Workplace Insight; European Director, Work and Place Journal; Fellow, Royal Society of Arts  |  UK

Mark Eltringham has spent more than 30 years at the centre of the workplace design conversation as a publisher, editor, commentator, and curator. As the founder and publisher of Workplace Insight, one of the leading independent publications covering workplace design and management in the UK and beyond, he has shaped the agenda for a community of practitioners, researchers, designers, and occupiers.

He is European Director of the Work and Place Journal, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and has chaired sessions at the Workspace Design Show and other major events for many years. His ability to ask the questions that draw out the most interesting thinking from panellists and presenters is widely noted in the industry.

Eltringham's perspective is that of a thoughtful observer who has watched the field evolve through multiple cycles of innovation and hype, bringing to his writing a healthy scepticism about trend and an appreciation for the genuine complexity of what it means to design spaces that work for diverse human beings.

29. Phil Kirschner

Founder, The Workline; Independent Advisor (ex-McKinsey, WeWork, JLL)  |  USA

Phil Kirschner has built one of the most distinctive personal platforms in the workplace strategy conversation through a combination of deep experience, strategic independence, and a commitment to honest analysis. His career has taken him through McKinsey (as Senior Expert on the future of work), WeWork, JLL, and Credit Suisse, giving him an unusually broad view of how different kinds of organisations think about their physical environments.

He now runs The Workline, a newsletter and advisory platform focused on helping senior leaders think more rigorously about work and workplace decisions. He has been named a LinkedIn Top Voice in his field, and his writing is notable for its willingness to complicate the simple narratives that dominate the future-of-work conversation.

His perspective on the intersection of technology, organisational culture, and physical space is increasingly valuable as those three domains become more thoroughly entangled. Work Design Magazine has featured him in its docuseries on workplace thinking, and for senior leaders navigating complex workplace decisions, his analysis is among the most practically useful available.

Category 6: Architects and Design Practitioners Shaping Built Workplaces

The people in this category are primarily known as design practitioners actively shaping significant built environments. Where the previous categories are weighted toward research, strategy, and intellectual contribution, the voices here are principally known for the physical work they produce and the design thinking that informs it.

30. Alessandro Ranaldi

Partner and Head of Workplace Consultancy, Foster and Partners  |  UK

Alessandro Ranaldi is Partner and Head of Workplace Consultancy at Foster and Partners, one of the world's most architecturally significant firms, where he has built a practice that connects architecture, urban planning, and workplace strategy for global clients navigating complex real estate decisions.

His work connects Foster and Partners' internationally recognised design excellence with a rigorous approach to occupier needs, helping clients understand how their physical environments can serve their business strategy rather than simply reflect it. He is a regular speaker at major industry events including the Workspace Design Show, where his perspectives on collaborative design processes have been well received.

He contributed an endorsement to Myerson and Ross's Unworking, calling it a must-read for understanding the forces influencing how we work and noting its evidence-based approach to the future of the office. His position at the intersection of world-class architectural practice and serious workplace thinking makes him a distinctive voice in this field.

31. Helen Berresford

Partner, Head of ID:SR, Sheppard Robson  |  UK

Helen Berresford leads the interior design practice at Sheppard Robson, one of the UK's most established and architecturally ambitious firms, where she has built a reputation for workplace projects that take the experience of the people who use them as seriously as the visual and spatial ambition of the architecture.

She is a regular speaker at the Workspace Design Show, including the 2026 edition where she appeared alongside Collin Burry and Nicola Gillen in a panel examining how architecture and design must evolve in response to shifting work patterns. Her perspective on the relationship between design excellence and genuine workplace effectiveness is grounded in years of practice at the highest level.

Her work represents the best of British commercial interior design practice, which at its finest combines aesthetic intelligence with a serious commitment to how human beings actually experience space over time.

32. Matt Jackson

Director, Interiors, Hawkins Brown  |  UK

Matt Jackson is a Director at Hawkins Brown, one of the UK's most active commercial architecture firms, where he leads the interiors practice. His career has taken him through MCM Architecture, Gensler, and BDG architecture and design before arriving at Hawkins Brown, giving him experience across a wide range of approaches to commercial workplace design.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the British Council of Offices, and his work has been published in Interior Design Magazine, OnOffice, and the Architects Journal. His interest in how design shapes daily life and behaviour, and his commitment to continuous learning and improvement, come through consistently in his writing and speaking.

Jackson's perspective is that of a practitioner who has moved through different firm cultures and design traditions and arrived at a set of convictions about what serious workplace design requires: deep research, genuine curiosity about human behaviour, and the courage to question the assumptions that drive too many briefs toward predictable outcomes.

33. Ray Yuen

Office Managing Director, Gensler Asia Pacific  |  Hong Kong / Singapore

Ray Yuen leads Gensler's office practice across Asia Pacific and has become one of the most prominent voices on how the workplace needs to evolve in response to the fundamental shift in what employees are willing to commute for. He addressed the Fortune Brainstorm Design forum in Macau in December 2025 on the argument that the workplace needs to be designed as an experience rather than simply a functional space.

His work includes a project in Tokyo for a company where 50 percent of staff had been working from home, designed with 15 different food offerings to reflect his conviction that organisations winning the return-to-office challenge are reimagining what an office can offer rather than simply demanding attendance.

Yuen's perspective on the Asia Pacific workplace market, where return-to-office dynamics, cultural attitudes toward in-person work, and the relationship between workplace design and urban development all play out differently than in North American or European markets, is valuable for anyone whose workplace thinking needs to extend beyond the English-speaking world.

34. Stela Lupushor

Chief Reframer, Reframe.Work Inc.; Founder, amazing.community  |  USA

Stela Lupushor is Chief Reframer at Reframe.Work Inc. and brings to the workplace design conversation a perspective shaped by careers at Fidelity Investments, TIAA, IBM, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Her focus is on inclusive workplace design, human-centred analytics, and the challenge of using technology without losing the organisational commitment to people.

She founded amazing.community, a nonprofit extending the work horizon for women, and her writing on the human capital challenges facing organisations, including the convergence of demographic trends and technological disruption, represents the kind of data-grounded, evidence-based analysis that is underrepresented in mainstream workplace conversations.

Her LinkedIn presence, through which she shares demographic data, policy research, and practitioner experience with a large audience, has built a following among HR and workplace leaders looking for rigorous analysis rather than motivational content. Her connection between human capital strategy and the physical design of workplaces is distinctive and increasingly important.

35. Melissa Gonzalez

Founder, The Lion'esque Group; Author and Retail-to-Workplace Strategist  |  USA

Melissa Gonzalez brings to the workplace design conversation a perspective developed at the intersection of retail experience design and human-centred space strategy. As founder of The Lion'esque Group, she has spent years helping organisations create physical environments that communicate brand identity and culture as tangibly as any marketing campaign.

Her thinking on the experiential dimensions of space, on how physical environments create emotional responses that influence behaviour and belonging, translates directly to the workplace context at a moment when the office needs to compete for people's presence rather than demand it. Her perspective challenges the separation between how organisations think about customer experience and how they think about employee experience.

She is a regular contributor to industry conversations about the future of the physical environment and brings a commercial intelligence to the workplace design conversation that complements the more strategy-focused and research-focused voices on this list.

36. Louise Hewlett

Managing Director and Workplace Consultant, McVeigh Hewlett  |  Australia

Louise Hewlett is a workplace consultant and Managing Director of McVeigh Hewlett, an Australian practice focused on helping organisations design workplaces that genuinely support their people and their purpose. Her work spans workplace strategy, change management, and the kind of facilitated engagement with employees that ensures the people most affected by a workplace transformation have a genuine voice in shaping it.

Her perspective is grounded in the Asia Pacific context, where cultural attitudes toward office attendance, urban density, and the relationship between home and workplace play out differently than in North American or European markets. She contributes to industry conversations in Australia and the broader APAC region about what hybrid work actually requires of the physical environment.

For organisations in Australia and the Asia Pacific region navigating workplace transformation, her practical and regionally informed perspective is a useful complement to the predominantly Northern Hemisphere voices that dominate global workplace design discourse.

37. Sarah Fay

Head of Workplace, CBRE UK  |  UK

Sarah Fay leads the workplace practice for CBRE in the UK, working with major occupiers on the design, strategy, and change management dimensions of workplace transformation. Her work sits at the meeting point of commercial real estate and human experience, helping clients navigate the complex set of decisions that determine whether a workplace investment delivers the outcomes it was intended to produce.

Her perspective reflects years of direct client engagement across a wide range of sectors, giving her a practical intelligence about the organisational dynamics that distinguish workplace transformations that succeed from those that do not. She contributes regularly to industry conversations about hybrid work, portfolio optimisation, and the evolving role of the physical office in organisational life.

Her position at CBRE, one of the world's largest commercial real estate services firms, gives her access to a breadth of data and client experience that informs her thinking about how workplace strategy is evolving across different sectors and geographies.

38. Dr Vanessa Champion

Founder and Editor, Journal of Biophilic Design; Director, Biophilic Design Conference  |  UK

Dr Vanessa Champion is the founder and editor of the Journal of Biophilic Design and the driving force behind the Biophilic Design Conference, the UK's leading dedicated event for practitioners, researchers, and advocates working at the intersection of nature and built environment.

Her work in establishing the journal and the conference has helped create an infrastructure for the biophilic design community that it previously lacked: a peer-reviewed publication that takes the science seriously, and an annual gathering that brings together researchers and practitioners in a shared conversation about what the evidence shows and how to apply it.

She chaired the sustainability session at the 2026 Workspace Design Show on reconnecting design and nature, exploring the challenges and opportunities of bringing genuine biophilic principles into commercial workplace design at scale. Her contribution to the field is as much organisational and curatorial as it is intellectual, and both dimensions matter for a field that needs rigour as much as it needs enthusiasm.

39. Ryan Luby

Partner, McKinsey and Company; Workplace and Real Estate Strategy  |  USA

Ryan Luby is a Partner at McKinsey and Company with a focus on workplace and real estate strategy, bringing to the workplace design conversation the kind of organisational and analytical perspective that very few practitioners combine with genuine depth in the physical environment.

His work with McKinsey clients on questions of workplace strategy, portfolio optimisation, and the organisational dimensions of hybrid work sits at the intersection of the consulting and design worlds, and his visibility in the wider workplace conversation, including through Work Design Magazine's docuseries on workplace thinking, has made him a voice that design and real estate professionals increasingly look to for the organisational view.

The questions McKinsey clients are asking about the workplace, about what the office is for, about how to measure its contribution, and about how to align physical strategy with organisational culture, are the questions that drive the most interesting work in the field. Luby's position gives him an unusually clear view of where the most sophisticated organisations are in that conversation.

40. Jesse Carrillo

Global Head of Real Estate, Spotify; Workplace Experience Leader  |  Sweden / USA

Jesse Carrillo leads global real estate for Spotify, and in doing so has become one of the more prominent occupier voices on what it actually means for a major technology organisation to put its workplace strategy where its people values are. Spotify's Work From Anywhere policy, launched in 2021, has made the firm a case study in how organisations can redesign their relationship with physical space when they genuinely give employees choice about where to work.

His perspective from the occupier side of the table, where the consequences of design decisions are measured in employee experience and retention rather than project fees, is a useful counterweight to the supply-side voices that dominate most workplace design conversations. He brings a direct operational intelligence about what works and what does not when ambitious workplace concepts meet the daily realities of how people actually want to work.

For organisations navigating the tension between real estate cost reduction and genuine investment in employee experience, Carrillo's thinking on how to make that trade-off honestly and strategically is among the most practically useful available from the occupier perspective.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is workplace design?

Workplace design is the discipline of creating physical environments that support the people and activities they are intended to serve. In a corporate or organisational context, it encompasses everything from space planning and interior architecture to workplace strategy, change management, and post-occupancy evaluation. Great workplace design sits at the intersection of behavioural science, organisational strategy, sustainability, and architecture.

What is the difference between a workplace designer and a workplace strategist?

A workplace designer typically creates physical spaces, working in architecture or interior design. A workplace strategist works at a more conceptual level, helping organisations understand what their physical environments need to do before design begins. In practice, the most effective people in the field often move between both roles.

What is biophilic design in a workplace context?

Biophilic design is the practice of incorporating natural elements into the built environment in ways that satisfy human beings' evolved need for connection with nature. In a workplace context this includes natural light, plants, water features, natural materials, and views of the outside world. Research consistently links these elements to improved wellbeing, reduced stress, and better cognitive performance.

What is neuroinclusive design?

Neuroinclusive design refers to the creation of spaces that work for people across the full spectrum of neurological differences, including those with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, sensory processing differences, and other neurological profiles. It involves careful attention to acoustic design, lighting levels, spatial zoning, the availability of quieter spaces, and the reduction of sensory overload.

What is the Leesman Index?

The Leesman Index is an independent benchmark for workplace experience, built from responses from more than 1.5 million employees across thousands of organisations globally. Its global average score of 69.5 out of 100 against a homeworking benchmark of 79.5 represents one of the clearest pieces of evidence that many corporate offices have significant room for improvement.

What is activity-based working?

Activity-based working (ABW) is a workplace model in which employees are not assigned fixed desks but choose from a range of different spaces depending on the activity they are performing: focused work, collaboration, informal conversation, private phone calls, and so on. The model requires careful space design, change management, and cultural alignment to work well.

How can a leadership consultant support a workplace design project?

A significant workplace transformation is as much a cultural and leadership challenge as a design one. The physical environment can only do so much if the leadership behaviours, team norms, and organisational culture that determine how people use space are not addressed alongside it. Working with a leadership and team effectiveness consultant like Jonno White of Clarity Group Global as part of a broader workplace change programme can help ensure the human dimensions of the transition receive the same attention as the physical ones.

Jonno works with leadership teams and organisations across a wide range of sectors. Reach him at jonno@consultclarity.org.

Final Thoughts

The 40 people compiled here do not share a single point of view on what the future of the workplace looks like. Some believe the office needs to become radically more experiential and hospitality-focused to earn its place. Others argue for a more evidence-based, data-driven approach that takes seriously the gap between what organisations believe they provide and what employees actually experience. Some are focused on inclusion, on making sure that workplaces designed for an imagined average person stop failing the real, diverse human beings who occupy them.

What they share is a commitment to the idea that this work matters, that the spaces in which people spend their working lives are not neutral, and that getting them right is worth serious intellectual effort, genuine investment, and honest engagement with evidence.

If you are navigating a workplace transition of any scale, the ideas and research in this list are a good place to start. And if you are looking for a leadership consultant to work alongside your design team on the cultural and organisational dimensions of that transition, Jonno White at Clarity Group Global has helped organisations across sectors do exactly that. He is also the author of Step Up or Step Out, available on Amazon Australia, and host of The Leadership Conversations Podcast with more than 230 episodes downloaded across 150 countries. You can reach Jonno at jonno@consultclarity.org or visit consultclarity.org.

Related reading on consultclarity.org:

50 Essential Thought Leaders in the Future of Work Globally

50 Essential Thought Leaders in Organisational Development

Working Genius Implementation Guide for Teams

Working Genius for Remote and Hybrid Teams

About the Author

Jonno White is the founder of Clarity Group Global (operating as Consult Clarity), a Brisbane-based leadership consultancy working with schools, corporates, and nonprofits globally. He is a keynote speaker, Certified Facilitator of the Working Genius framework (Patrick Lencioni / The Table Group), executive team offsite facilitator, coach, and author of Step Up or Step Out (available on Amazon Australia). He hosts The Leadership Conversations Podcast with more than 230 episodes distributed across 150 countries. International travel for keynotes and offsites is welcome. jonno@consultclarity.org | consultclarity.org