Leadership & Experience Team
Paula Spiese
ESG Principal
Nida Mehtab
Nida brings her passion for real estate and globally diverse experience to help companies assess and analyze their portfolios and solve problems at hand. Her experience in project and program management, coupled with her academic background in architecture and commercial real estate development has given her a unique understanding of real estate portfolios from Strategic to detailed construction level and bring out-of-the-box solutions to the table.
She has been a part of Barclays business roll out in emerging markets, Standards Chartered bank rebranding and real estate capacity planning, as well successfully managing multisite and multi million dollars programs for financial and utility giants like J.P. Morgan Chase and Pacific Gas and Electric. Her understanding of financials and data has allowed her to help clients develop long term real estate strategies, portfolio plans and execution strategies and developing business cases. Her ability to drive results and critical thinking has helped deliver large commercial office space projects with very aggressive deadlines for tech giant clients like Facebook. She possesses uncanny abilities to analyze workplace and real estate data to identify gaps and opportunities for companies helping them meet their targets and roll out new initiatives.
Nida has served as a trusted board member for Women Leaders in Commercial Real Estate for Goldie B. Wolfe Miller Foundation. She has been recognized a woman of the year by Barclays and has presented paper on South Asian Architectural Platform.
She has delivered projects varying between 50,000 square feet and 500,000 square feet and provided project management and portfolio planning leadership for multi-million square foot programs with construction values of over $1B.
Lisa Whited
Lisa Whited has 39 years’ experience creating optimal workplaces for high performing teams. She is driven to make a dent in climate change and improve people’s engagement with work. Lisa believes that connection to purpose is paramount, and she encourages generative thinking at the leadership level to clarify what is essential. These facilitated, inclusive conversations can lead to decisions that shape policy, grow programs, develop people, influence workspace architecture and interior design, and positively impact the planet. Lisa includes all voices in a change process. She has consulted with organizations small and large, local and global, across virtually all industries.
Change Management: Recent engagements include Google, Willis Towers Watson, Aroma Joe’s, Microsoft, Bernstein Shur, Evergy, and Amnesty International.
Global Agile Program Development: Provided strategic consulting services to Omnicom, developing a Global Agile Workplace Program for 1200 agencies and 70,000 employees.
Organizational Development Consulting: Led and facilitated strategic planning retreats and provided board member training for 79 chapters of the USGBC, creator of the LEED program and credential.
Hybrid Workplace Strategy: Consulted with organizations’ leaders to clarify their priorities, engage with managers, and support policy development and change management processes as they transitioned to a higher percentage of remote and hybrid workers post-COVID.
Workplace Design: Provided programming and interior architecture services to organizations ranging from 10 employees to more than 1,500 employees using a tightly facilitated inclusive process that engages all employees in reimagining their workplace. Recent clients include Clark Insurance, Patrons Oxford, Tilson Technology, Maine Today Media, Kepware, United Way, and Camden National Bank.
Publications + Presentations: Author of 50+ articles for trade publications; author of Work Better. Save the Planet, a sustainable plan for building employee engagement through workplace change; contributing author to Sustainability + Planetary Health chapter for Work On The Move 3. Recent presentations include: Circular Economy – Our Time + Responsibility to Act; The Future of the Workplace in a Post-Pandemic World; Is Hybrid Work Sustainable?; Build Community + Drive Innovation with Remote Work; How Will Your Work Change-Post Covid-19?; Rethinking Workplaces to Build Community; Taking On Climate Change: You Can Make A Difference.
Lisa has an M.S. in Organization + Management from Antioch University and holds certifications in mediation, facilitation, and interior design. She has been recognized for her leadership and received the 2017 CIDQ Louis S. Tregre Award and the 2002 IIDA Leadership Award, among others.
Lisa volunteers with IFMA’s Workplace Evolutionaries, the Olympia Snowe Women’s Leadership Institute, her local Conscious Capitalism chapter, Pecha Kucha, DisruptHR, and Portland Empowered, a group that educates immigrant parents about the public school system so they are in a position of power when advocating for their own children’s education.
Steve Hargis
Steve is a globally-recognized professional with research and design projects focused on getting the most out of both people and physical resources, ensuring the two are indelibly linked together. Steve wears the client’s hat, and his stakeholder engagement skills are a key contributor to success. He tailors process and outcomes to organization’s unique business needs.
This experience includes significant development and deployment of workplace strategies for global corporations. Previous global clients include Amazon, VMware, HP Inc., Shell, Microsoft, Google, Eli Lilly, and Zurich Insurance. Steve currently leads AWA’s engagement with Twitter.
His real estate and workplace consulting career spans disciplines (architecture, interiors, consulting, program management, relationship management) and geographies (Houston, New York City, Mexico City, San Francisco).
Kumar Abhishek
Abhishek has extensive experience in product ownership, specifically during his tenure at Intel Corporation. He served as a Product Owner, where he was responsible for managing the entire product lifecycle of multiple products within the company's portfolio.
He was responsible for driving product strategy, development, and deployment plans, as well as working closely with cross-functional teams such as engineering, marketing, and sales to ensure successful product adoption.
One of the key areas of focus for Abhishek has been product road-mapping and improving user experience. He was responsible for creating and implementing long-term product roadmaps, which were instrumental in aligning the organization's resources and capabilities with business objectives. He has a knack for improving customer experience by doing a thorough analysis of applications and processes and then working back with the customers and other partners to identify and implement creative solutions. His ability to effectively communicate product vision and strategy and drive cross-functional teams toward a common goal has yielded solid long-term results for the projects he has worked on.
Abhishek's experience in product ownership and management at Intel is a testament to his ability to drive product strategy, development, and go-to-market plans and his ability to lead cross-functional teams.
Abhishek as the Director of Business Development and Operations of a leading HVAC consulting business has demonstrated a successful track record of building and scaling it.
Abhishek was responsible for leading the company's strategic growth and expansion efforts. He was instrumental in building the company's sales and distribution network, and in establishing partnerships with key corporate business houses.
His ability to build and maintain strong relationships with key market players helped the company secure valuable contracts and expand its market share.
Ankita Gupta
Ankita is a motivated team player focusing on project cost controls, schedule optimization, and development of tools and techniques needed in effectively manage real estate construction projects. She is adept in Business intelligence using advanced data analysis. Ankita strives to make project management leaner, focusing on continuous process improvement, and increasing efficiencies.
Her areas of expertise are:
Space programming, supporting the overall engagement with the end users and workstreams, developing organizational tools, develop space standards and test fits. Understanding customer real estate vision and align with actual space plans. Business Intelligence and data analytics for portfolio optimization. Mapping inter-departmental adjacencies that have been established from the survey responses, meetings with the steering committees and special functional leads.
Space programming with an iterative process that evolved according to the client's requirements, considering the workgroup function the building codes and regulations, lighting, teaming requirements, inter-communication, and storage to make the best use of available space.
Celeste Tell
Celeste is a seasoned program director with in-depth knowledge at the intersections of workplace strategy, portfolio & strategic occupancy planning, circular economy and design strategies. An interdisciplinary strategist, systems thinker, designer and change agent, she is committed to improving the future of the planet by innovating the future of the workplace. Celeste has held leadership roles as both end-user/occupier, designer and consultant on large, technically, and organizationally complex capital and operational projects for clients in the public, private and non-profit sectors, nationally and globally. She currently serves as Senior Associate at AWA, Portfolio Planning Principal at Caryatid and co-founder and CEO at Epicycled. Celeste has a Master of Design (MDes) in Strategy & Planning from the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology and a BA, Interior Design from Michigan State University.
Sofia Fonseca de Nino
Sofia Fonseca de Nino is a Real Estate and Design Advisor.
She has been embedded in teams within Spotify, HP and Marathon Oil to assist their Real Estate and HR leaders in driving organizational transformation. She has worked closely with the Workplace Strategy teams at LinkedIn, Chevron, and British Petroleum. She has certifications from MIT Sloane School of Management on Artificial Intelligence for Business Strategy and from PROSCI Change Management.
With over 20 years of experience working virtually, she has assisted clients globally to activate their corporate mission/DNA essence into a narrative that stimulates cultural principles in their companies. She specializes in facilitation, programming, people engagement and workplace strategies.
Her research has placed an emphasis on the importance of neuroscience and emotional intelligence in design. She received a Master’s Degree in Architecture with a focus on Management and Real Estate from Harvard University and a Bachelor in Environmental Science from the Gerald D. Hines University of Houston College of Architecture and Design where she is currently part of the Graduate Faculty teaching Methods of Research and Thesis.
She presents in international conventions and delights in connecting personal purpose to company mission. She speaks Spanish fluently.
Camilo Pascua
Camilo Pascua is a Space Programming and Planning Professional. He has been embedded in teams within Thermo Fisher, Lam Research and Genentech to assist their Corporate Facilities leaders in driving organizational transformation. He has worked closely with the Engineering and Facilities teams at Lam Research, eSilicon and Farasis Energy. He has certifications from California State University, Hayward for Facilities Management.With over 20 years of experience, he has helped clients transform their ideas into built environments that address the various needs of their fast paced business. He specializes in space programming, planning and facilities management.
He received a Master’s of Business Administration in International Business from California State University, Hayward and a Bachelor in Architecture and Environmental Design from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
Marie MacInnis
Marie MacInnis has been working in the design and building industry for over 8 years across Canada and the United States in a variety of roles. Her experience includes multidisciplinary engineering project management to architectural design with a focus on workplace strategy and design. She has worked on projects including large government campus design and planning, technology campus strategic planning and design along with technology workplace interior architecture.
Beatriz Esquivel-Bockman
Beatriz is a seasoned project manager with over 25 years of experience in property management, construction management, and workspace planning. She prides herself on having a keen eye for opportunities to improve workflows, and operational processes to make them happen without upsetting staff and business.
Beatriz has worked with large companies, city and county governments, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations. She’s managed multi-site portfolios requiring critical budget oversight, contract negotiations, purchasing agreements, staff leadership, vendor relations, and safety compliance and developed excellent business continuity plans.
One aspect of project management Beatriz enjoys the most is working with teams that engage and challenge her to influence project success through high levels of creativity and efficiency. Some of her favorite projects are those where she has been able to improve space efficiencies and significantly reduce energy consumption and waste.
At leisure Beatriz participates in a variety of community service and fundraising activities.
Elizabeth Cisneros
Elizabeth has 12 years of experience in Project Management and Strategic Planning, having executed complex projects of all office types, financial services, healthcare, and life sciences domestically and internationally.
Elizabeth has worked on projects with Capital One, Bank of America, GluMobile, Xerox, Northrup Grumman, and many others. Her most recent experience was working with UCSF and Gilead Sciences doing small lab buildouts, lab and personnel relocations, and assisting with equipment asset management. She brings a wealth of specialized knowledge and expertise to each client project. She understands the long-term impact of decisions on cross-functional teams while also understanding a client’s goals and objectives. She establishes trustworthy lasting relationships with clients and partners throughout the process.
Elizabeth was inspired to pursue a Corporate Real Estate career when she secured a Project Management job with Devry Education Group in their Real Estate and Facilities Department in Downers Grove, IL. After living in Chicago for 15 years, she moved back to the Bay Area in late 2018 to continue her career.
When not working, Elizabeth likes to spend time with her kids attending sporting events, and amusement parks, trying new restaurants, and enjoying small weekend getaways. She also enjoys her personal time relaxing, watching movies, and having dinners with friends.
Evelyn Gonzalez
Evelyn has over eight years of experience in the facilities industry with focus on Moves, Adds, and Changes (MAC). She has broad experience in building space management, workplace move relocation and vendor management for building upkeep. She credits her passion, dedication, and attention to detail for making her the Move Manager she is today.
She began her career as an Operational Coordinator overseeing janitorial operations. Later in her career, she came across the MAC department where she found her passion for coordination, space planning, and interior design. Successful projects include the relocation of 300+ people along with reconfiguring the workspace, launching new buildings, and bringing new buildings online.
Evelyn grew up in the Bay Area. When not at work, she spends time with her family and takes family vacations. She is always willing to try new food, likes watching football games, and enjoys the fall season!
Aryk Garcia
Aryk is a dynamic, driven, and accomplished Facilities Management professional with 12+ years’ experience within Project Management, Strategic Portfolio Planning, Construction Management, Lean Manufacturing, Procedure Development, Space Planning and Interior & Lighting Design. Fluent in English and Spanish, his path has been distinctive with time at Bio-Rad as Global Workplace Experience & Design Manager, Adobe as Senior Space & Occupancy Planner, At LinkedIn Senior Strategic Occupancy Planner and at Google as Global CAD-CAFM Manager.
His focus is driven by results, captured by rigorous pursuit of creative and logical balance of data. Aryk enjoys a challenge given the freedom to explore how best to discover solutions with given constraints, he breaks down barriers to success and is happiest when allowed to navigate roadblocks with his creativity. He is detail oriented, client focused, discreet, and a A+ communicator. Aryk’s easy-going disposition, team building mindset and “ready to take charge” attitude is what makes him a subject matter expert.
He has served on The Hispanic Organization, Leadership & Advancement (HOLA), Board Member - (Cushman Wakefield, SF Bay Area) & The National Hispanic Professional Organization (NHPO), Board Member, McAllen, TX. Aryk holds a Bachelors of Science degree from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in Interior & Lighting Design.
Corinne Murray
Corinne Murray a future of work, workplace and employee effectiveness consultant at Caryatid. For over a decade, Corinne has been a thought leader and expert at companies like WeWork, American Express, RXR and CBRE where she created and tested new workplace and organizational designs to foster healthy employee experience and company culture through the lens of effectiveness and productivity.
Farheen Amin
Farheen Amin is a seasoned professional with 15+ years in Middle East retail, excelling in product development, brand management, and buying. Her passion for innovation fuels new opportunities for larger organizations, evident in her end-to-end project management and change-driving approach. A holder of an MBA with honors and diverse diplomas from prestigious institutions, she's a blend of practical experience and academic excellence.
At Landmark, a leading regional retailer, Farheen led the central product team, overseeing the lifecycle of 5000+ SKUs. Her global exposure at major B2B events honed her stakeholder management skills. Her role spanned crafting product strategies to launch, and collaborating with various departments seamlessly. Adept in team building, training, and spotting growth prospects, her cross-cultural proficiency enhances adaptability. Her deep understanding of Middle East market intricacies makes her pivotal to Caryatid's diverse team, embodying innovation and expertise across domains.
Paula Spiese
Paula is an advocate for creating a greener, healthier built environment. With more than two decades of industry and consulting experience, including Big 4 advisory, she has worked with some of the world's largest organizations across multiple sectors to help them achieve their most critical strategic goals in workplace and facilities performance, sustainability, ESG, wellbeing, and technology.
As a versatile consulting leader, Paula has a proven track record of leading corporate real estate and technology transformation initiatives and cross-functional teams, driving significant improvements across diverse sectors. She is recognized for her ability to build strong client relationships and promote innovative growth strategies through strategic communication. Committed to team development and professional growth, she places a high value on coaching and mentorship. Her approach is straightforward and focused on practical strategy, helping guide initiatives from vision to execution.
Richard J. Palomba
Dick has extensive experience and management responsibilities working as an entrepreneur, co-founder of an international real estate services company, and thought leader for numerous emerging and established high tech companies, and as principal of a strategic planning and management consulting firm. He brings an extensive background in organizational development, administrative services, facilities and project management, strategic systems and financial planning, international real estate, design and construction, and contract negotiations.
His earlier work experience included six and a half years of administrative experience in higher education at the University of San Francisco and The University of Massachusetts at Amherst in student services and financial administration. As managing partner of his own consulting firm and co-founder of an international real estate services company, Dick has provided leadership and effective solutions for a wide variety of corporate clients including financial services institutions, technology firms, manufacturing, and services companies. The ROI for most client engagements far exceeds 20:1.
In addition, Dick has served as a board member and senior advisor to two startup companies. He is an active member of the industry professional association - CoreNet Global - and has served on the Executive Committee, Co-Chair of Educational Programs Committee and Co-Chair of the Annual Awards Recognition Committee for the Northern California CoreNet Chapter.
Dick did his doctoral work in Leadership in Administration at the University of San Francisco and received a M Ed in Educational Leadership and Administration and a BA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He holds the CFM designation from IFMA, is a member of CoreNet, a candidate for the SLCR designation, and a member of IAOP. He has taught at three universities and presented at numerous professional conferences on subjects including business process design, leadership, outsourcing and corporate real estate management.
Kate Lister
Kate is a highly regarded speaker, writer, and workplace strategy consultant. She has written or co-authored five business books, numerous white papers, and scores of articles for major media outlets. Her research has been cited by hundreds of publications including the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and many others. She is a member of the strategic advisory board and leadership team of Workplace Evolutionaries (WE), a global group of leading workplace thinkers and doers who are dedicated to "changing the world one workplace at a time.” In July of 2020, Kate was one of three witnesses invited to testify before a congressional committee on the future of telework in government.