Voice of the Occupier - Allison English & Mara Cummings

Voice of the Occupier is brought to you by the UK Chapter of CoreNet Global and hosted by Allison English, Co-founder of Aéto.

In this episode, Allison sits down with Mara Cummings, Senior Vice President and Head of International Real Estate and Facility Operations at Warner Bros. Discovery, to explore the evolving role of corporate real estate in supporting global business, workplace experience, and organisational change.

Their conversation looks at what it takes to lead international real estate and facilities operations in a fast-moving media and entertainment business, the importance of aligning workplace strategy with business priorities, and the skills needed to navigate complexity across global portfolios.

If you're interested in corporate real estate leadership, the future of workplace and facilities operations, and how occupiers are responding to changing business needs, this episode is well worth a listen.

Thanks for listening. Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Transcript

 It’s The Voice of the Occupier from CoreNet UK. We explore what it really takes to create spaces that work for people and organizations through candid conversations with the leaders, thinkers, and doers behind the decisions. I'm your host, Allison English. Let's dive in.

Thanks for joining, everyone. We are joined today by Mara Cummings, senior vice president and head of international real estate and facility operations at Warner Bros. Discovery. Mara, thank you so much for joining.

Thanks, Allison. It's good to see you.

Likewise. Most people are probably familiar with WBD, or at least some of the content you produce. But for anyone who isn't, can you tell us a bit more about what WBD does, the scale of it, the footprint, et cetera?

Yeah, absolutely. This is something I get very excited about — the industry that I work in.

Warner Bros. Discovery is one of the largest media and entertainment companies in the world. We have about thirty-five thousand employees operating across more than fifty countries. But the numbers only tell part of the story.

The real answer is, if you've watched television, if you've gone to the cinema, if you've opened up your streaming app in the last decade on your TV or your mobile device, you have almost certainly consumed something that we've made.

HBO, Max, CNN, Warner Bros., Eurosport, Cartoon Network, HGTV, Food Network — the list goes on and on. And then all of our franchises, our Harry Potters and whatnot.

So I would say it is an exciting company. It's an exciting industry to work in, but from a real estate perspective, that translates into a genuinely global portfolio and a very diverse asset class at that.

Studios, offices, broadcast facilities, data centers, and retail. No two markets are the same. No two asset types are the same.

And I think for me, that kind of complexity is what drew me to the industry from a CRE perspective. Definitely what's kept me in it, that and the industry itself.

People often think of real estate as the backdrop to the business, but in a company like Warner Bros. Discovery, it is part and parcel to the product.

The spaces where content gets made, where talent works, where broadcasts are done, where brands come together — that is real estate for me doing something very strategic, not just operational, and truly supporting the business and what they do.

Yeah, amazing. They certainly can't do what they do without the real estate solutions that you provide, so that's incredible.

And you've been with the organization for a while, but it's looked different, and we're gonna talk a lot about change today. But let's start with how your roles have evolved.

So you've been with the company in various forms since two thousand and four through discoveries, reinventions, international expansion, and ultimately the Warner Bros. merger in twenty twenty-two.

Instead of going through the timeline, can you take us inside what that merger actually felt like from a CRE perspective? What were you solving for that nobody outside of the function would ever see?

Yeah. I think the headline version of a merger is the deal, of course. It's what we read in the headlines — the deal itself.

You start taking that into the company, the org chart, the synergy number, the targets, and you start thinking about how to achieve them.

But the real estate function lives in what happens the morning after all of that.

So you've got two companies, two portfolios, two sets of leases, and two facilities teams, and often very different cultures. In some cases, even more cultures.

In the previous merger, there were many different operating divisions that came together in one of the companies, and so it really lent itself to multiple cultures, more than just two, that were really coming together.

And those cultures were very much expressed in their office spaces.

You have to try and make one coherent thing out of it, usually faster than anyone had planned for within the real estate organization, and according to targets that you may or may not have been part of putting together.

So I think what most people don't see is the data problem.

Before you can make a single smart decision about what to keep or what to exit, what to consolidate, you really have to know what you have.

In a large global merger, that's actually not a given. The bigger you are, it's almost harder to maintain the level of data integrity that is nonetheless necessary at a time of merging.

So we spent significant time in the early phases just making sure that we had a clean, reliable picture to know exactly what we had for both companies.

We spent time in advance of the merger itself and then continued that on as the two companies came together.

And I think having that clean, reliable picture of the combined portfolio — every lease, every commitment, break options, every piece of liability — until you have that baseline, you're really navigating blind, and it becomes conversations of conjecture versus really making data-based decisions.

And then I think there's the culture piece.

That plays out very physically in real estate — where people sit, how their space is designed, what the workplace says about who they are.

When you bring two organizations together, those things really carry meaning. And I think getting that wrong costs you people, not just money, at a time like this.

And I always say that real estate is the most visible expression of a merger.

Employees will read the press. They may not read it every day, but they do see their building every day. They'll see their floor every day and their desk and the amenities they have around them, and how their environment and the branding and the culture is changing within.

That, to me, is where integration either lands or it doesn't.

Yeah, it's the part of the brand that most employees, as you said, they consume it, they feel it. And when it changes, they feel a part of that, so it's trying to bring them along on whatever that journey looks like, right?

Yeah, it's a good point. They feel part of it or they feel disconnected from it, and so we have a huge responsibility. We feel accountable to that adherence and connection.

Yeah. Oh, that makes sense.

You've certainly navigated more than one period of significant change in your career and the uncertainty that comes with it. Without getting into anything terribly specific around the current situation at WBD, what does that kind of uncertainty actually do in a CRE function to the people running it?

Especially corporate real estate is known for being long-term. You can't get out of a lease in a month if something needs to change. So how have you navigated that?

Yeah, it's funny. Uncertainty does something very specific to a real estate function. It unfortunately freezes decisions that can't afford to be frozen.

Leases expire, break options have hard deadlines, and capital commitments have to be made or walked away from.

The business might be in a holding pattern or operating at a pace a bit slower than maybe the real estate has to react. But that real estate clock keeps ticking regardless.

So I think one of the invisible pressures is that you're constantly making consequential calls, sometimes with a paucity of enough information to really make what you feel are one hundred percent ironclad decisions.

You can't always wait for that clarity that may not come in time. You have to make a judgment call, document your reasoning, and then move forward, making sure that you can impart the right amount of flexibility into what you do.

I wouldn't say that flexibility is always an absolute given because you could be sacrificing cost in doing so if you just make flexibility the norm. But the closer you can get to balancing flexibility with the right cost is really what we tend to drive for.

And I think that does require a particular kind of professional confidence and experience and, frankly, a strong relationship with your finance and legal counterparts so that when you do act, you are covered.

And I think the other pressure that nobody talks about is what uncertainty does to the team.

Your people are reading the same headlines as everybody else, and they're wondering about their own futures while being asked to execute at a high level.

And as a leader, you're managing that anxiety while also dealing with your own sense of uncertainty.

You can't pretend it's not there, but you also can't let it become the operating mode.

I learned a long time ago that what a team needs in uncertain times isn't false reassurance. It's really clarity about what we can control and a laser-sharp focus on doing our jobs and doing them well.

And I think the portfolio doesn't really care about the headlines. It needs managing, and that level of focus and precision actually is a good thing at times of uncertainty.

Yeah, and I think zooming out of the M&A world, the headlines this year have been awash with how AI is changing the shape of organizations, or how organizations think AI might change the shape of the organization, so they're starting to shift that.

So I think your take on how to navigate uncertainty and what the parts are that you can control and the parts you can't, and trying to roll with it, definitely is much broader reaching than solely how to handle M&A. So that's brilliant.

So you've been at the intersection of media, real estate, and corporate transformation for over two decades. You started talking a little bit about how you've navigated that. But what are two or three things you've come to rely on, both as a practitioner and a leader, when the ground is just shifting beneath you?

Yeah. So I would say the first is data before decisions every time.

So in a fast-moving environment, there is enormous pressure to move quickly on instinct. And instinct does matter, especially with the experience that you have behind it.

But in real estate, bad decisions made on incomplete data have a very long tail, unfortunately — lease commitments locking you into years and investments made that you can't really pull back from.

So I would say I'm rigorous about making sure that the information foundation, as much as possible, is as solid as possible before we act, even when speed is being demanded.

And I think maybe I'd add to that — I said data before decisions — I would say data and debate. I think it's important that those decisions can withstand scrutiny.

Data helps with that. But that sort of Socratic method of constant questioning and making sure that it's the right decision is something I really welcome, both within my team and across the peer set that I work with.

And I think the second is what I think of as separating the urgent from the important.

During transformation, everything feels very urgent, but not everything is. So I think part of the job as a senior leader is to apply that filter on behalf of your team so they're not burning energy unnecessarily.

You have to protect their bandwidth for the decisions that really matter and are going to make the most impact.

And I would say the third is stakeholder relationships built long before you need them.

This is something maybe everybody can take away and start doing now, regardless of whether you're in a period of change or transformation, is making sure that you've built those relationships up.

Real estate absolutely cannot operate in an M&A period in a silo, so you need to have your finance people on side, legal, HR, and the business leads as well.

If you're trying to build those relationships in the middle of what some would call change and others would call crisis, then you're already a bit behind.

So the groundwork really needs to be done in the quiet periods so that when things do accelerate, the trust is there and the partnership can be relied upon.

I think, in my experience, the CRE leaders that really navigate transformation best are the ones that have made themselves indispensable to the rest of the business long before the deal is announced.

And there's a sort of calm that then spreads through the organization because they can rely on those relationships, and that really creates a culture of calm resolve as we collectively move forward as a team.

So I found that really helpful. I think those are three excellent frameworks to approach this.

I'm just curious, Mara — was there someone, and you don't have to name names, but along your career was there someone who modeled that type of leadership approach and you started picking up tips and learnings from them? Or is this stuff you discovered more along the way as things worked or didn't work? I'm just curious how you arrived at this approach.

Yeah, I'd say I've learned a lot through observation — not just what will work and cherry-picking for my own style, but you also learn, “Oh, okay, see how that didn't land well,” or, “I see how that lands well, but I can't do that because it won't be authentic.”

So I do think it's a bit of both.

And I think some of the decision-making and adopting your own style is knowing when you rely on data or observation and incorporate it versus knowing when your instinct is telling you otherwise.

I think some of the hardest moments are when your instinct is telling you one thing, and data or best-in-class standards or norms tell you another.

So I tend to be a bit of a go-with-your-gut person, but I think that also develops with age.

Going with your gut when you're in your twenties versus going with your gut when you're several decades past that are two different things, and I think that's just the journey we all go on.

And I think recognizing there is a journey, everyone's on that journey somewhere, and being mindful and having the EQ and self-awareness of that journey helps you really perfect that.

Mara, those are some brilliant examples of leading people through uncertainty, and that's a skill set that we don't talk about a lot in corporate real estate.

Corporate real estate is often focused on the metrics and the leases and the fit-outs and capital projects that comprise a role in corporate real estate.

So can you talk a bit about what you've actually done, not so much in theory but in real practice, to keep a team focused and grounded when nobody could tell them what the next year looks like?

Yeah. The most important thing I've done is to be honest.

It's maybe an unglamorous or obvious answer, but it's to be honest.

Not reckless, not sharing everything indiscriminately, but just being honest when I do not know something.

I say, “I don't know.”

Teams are really good, especially those that have worked with you for a really long time. They're very good at detecting when leaders are performing confidence that they don't actually have. And when they detect it, trust erodes fast.

So I would rather say, “Look, I can't tell you how this is gonna go or land, but here's what I can tell you,” or, “Yes, I'm aware, but unfortunately I can't share that at this time. But at the appropriate time, we can dig into that a bit more.”

And if it's something I don't know but can find out, I'll say, “Look, I don't know, but I'm gonna take that back and see if I can get some answers on that.”

I'd rather do that than just fill the silence with things that really don't mean anything.

So practically, in terms of what I do, I found that giving people ownership of a defined piece of work is probably one of the most stabilizing things that you can do at the right time and for all the right reasons.

I mentioned earlier about making sure the data is accurate and ensuring that people have the ability to focus and perform and move things forward — focus on the real estate that is constantly ticking over.

So that is a very stabilizing force and very relevant and very necessary.

I think uncertainty is hardest when people feel like they're just passengers. So when you give someone a clear mandate, a problem to solve, they really have something to put their energy into that's useful to the organization and the initiatives at the moment.

The uncertainty doesn't disappear, but it becomes a bit of background noise rather than the main event, and I think we're all used to background noise, generally speaking, in business.

And I would say I check in a bit more and a bit more personally during uncertain periods, both in the formal meetings that we have — regularly meeting with the team, regular one-on-ones — but also informally.

I think this is where being in the office and in physical proximity makes a big difference and is really important.

A conversation at the right moment can catch someone before they start spiraling, or you can pick up on things. People that have worked for you for a long time — you get to know each other very well — and you can really pick up on moments of uncertainty or spiraling.

And honestly, it keeps me calibrated as well. There's that symbiotic relationship that you have with your team members. I could not exist without my incredible team and the people and what they do.

And you can lose touch really quickly when you're operating at a senior level if you're not continuing to nurture those connections.

The team is often closer to the reality on the ground than you are, particularly when you lead a geographically distributed organization.

So the one thing I always come back to is that people don't really need you to have all the answers, right? But they absolutely need to know that you are leaning in and paying attention to them, to the company dynamics, to the latest news direction, et cetera.

They need to know that you are on the ball of your foot and paying attention.

Yeah. A little empathy goes a long way.

Yes.

Yeah, and I think that part about being a counterweight, either in your presence and in the conversations you have and/or by offering, as you said, that ownership in a project to take the focus away from the uncertainty that we can't control — it can consume so much attention. So I think that's super.

But if we flip that around a bit, in every challenge there's always opportunity.

So if you look back at the transformations you've been through, where did the real estate function end up creating value that nobody expected at the outset? And what conditions need to be in place for that to happen? How do you make that happen?

Yeah. Every major transformation that I've been part of — nearly all of them — has produced some version of the same surprise.

And that surprise is that the portfolio rationalization that started as a cost exercise actually ended up being more about strategic repositioning.

So you start by asking what you can exit and the rationalization overlay. But where it's done thoughtfully, you end up asking much better questions:

What does the business actually need from its real estate? Where should that real estate be?

You're elevating the conversation from just the static “what it is today and how do we pull the synergy out” to let's be a bit more visionary and forward-looking about what it can — and should — be in the future.

So in one case, what looked like a straightforward lease consolidation turned into a fundamental rethink of how the business used space globally.

We moved from a model where every market had its own facilities and ways of doing things and its own standards to something much more coherent.

That coherence then became a better platform for better data and cost management.

I say standardization, but standardization as standards and values that are then locally implemented with a local approach.

And that led to better employee experiences as well. None of that was really in the original brief.

And I think the conditions that need to be in place are that the corporate real estate function needs to be in the room early enough to shape that conversation.

If you're brought in after the strategic decisions have been made, you're executing on someone else's plan.

Now, notwithstanding the fact that certainly a lot of mergers and acquisitions are going to have a very small number of people in the room initially, and certainly there will be some projections and targets made and whatnot — so it's not necessarily that room — it's that anti-room that then, as the deal starts to really take shape, is still a great opportunity.

And I think if you're there at what I would call the beginning phases, then you can really influence what the plans are.

Real estate has genuine strategic leverage in a merger.

Portfolio liabilities and lease commitments and occupancy costs are very material numbers to any company.

So I think the function deserves a seat at the table.

The best CRE leaders really know how to claim that, how to operate within it, and — to my earlier point — ensuring that you've got that network built up around you. That's the secret sauce of success in leading an organization through that.

And I think the focus really is that the unexpected value in mergers — where real estate really created the maximum impact — is where real estate is treated strategically as a strategic lever and not just as an operational one.

I know we hear that a lot, but it is absolutely worth reiterating the strategic leverage that you have where real estate is concerned.

Yeah, and I think we've seen in the last six years real estate being elevated within certain organizations and having more of a seat at the table, so hopefully that's a trend that carries on and is furthered.

And as you said, being brought in earlier leaves you not just executing someone's plan, but being able to help them make a better plan and execute it.

Yep.

You've given some incredible advice in lots of different scenarios.

If there were a few key learnings for listeners who are navigating any sort of uncertainty — it could be in corporate real estate, it could be elsewhere, either now or something they may face in the future — what are some nuggets that you'd leave them with?

I would say — and I did mention it before, but I think it bears mentioning again — knowing your portfolio cold.

Not just headline numbers, but where are your break options? What commitments are coming up in the next twelve to eighteen months?

These are the questions that will get asked straight away, especially about some of your key properties.

I know the bigger your portfolio is, the harder it may be to have that kind of data. But sort through your portfolio, come up with your priority-one locations, and know the information cold.

It's really important to have that information to hand, certainly in uncertain times as you're navigating through.

The leaders that are able to answer those questions without rifling through spreadsheets are the ones that can move fast and build a solid reputation when they need to.

And that knowledge is the power base that you can operate from.

I think there are levels and shades of uncertainty literally everywhere, all the time, across all industries. We could find it anywhere.

So I think the leaders that really thrive are the ones that get very comfortable making good decisions with incomplete information, with the solid team around them and the network they've built, and not being afraid to act without one hundred percent information clarity.

Yeah. I think you make a really good point. It's just about whether uncertainty is at the forefront of our minds or somewhere else, but it never fully disappears.

The only two certainties are death and taxes.

Yeah.

Anything else in between is fair game.

So I think that's a wise way to approach it — making the best decisions you can based on the information you've got when you have it and making sure you're moving forward.

And isn't it funny, Allison, that as certain as taxes are, they're still really hard to figure out? So go figure.

From one American to another, absolutely. For sure.

Mara, you've been obviously an incredible leader within your organization for a long time, but also as part of the wider CoreNet UK group — not only for the UK chapter, but as a board member.

And you know that the young leaders are the next generation, right? They're the ones who are gonna be taking the torches as they're passed down from the current leadership in corporate real estate.

So one of the things we do at the end of this podcast is always ask for advice.

What would you share specifically with the young leaders of tomorrow in corporate real estate to help give them a better chance at success in their careers?

Yeah. I love this question.

I recently spoke in front of the India chapter when I was out there on business, and we had a similar question. It was really exciting to be able to look at some of those younger CRE leaders — the leaders of tomorrow — in the room and share this.

So I've pulled a little bit from that and will maybe come up with some others.

But I think the most important thing that keeps resonating for me is understanding the business that you're in before you try and understand real estate.

Whatever your business is — insurance, banking, industrial manufacturing, professional services, media, technology — whatever the business of your company is as a corporate real estate leader, get to know it front and center.

I find if you do not fully understand it, find people, find a mentor, find someone who can really help you dive in deep.

It does sound counterintuitive, particularly when you're early on in your career and focused on your personal development in your area of expertise, but for me it is the most important thing.

The most effective real estate leaders that I've encountered are the ones who can walk into a conversation with the CFO or COO and talk business outcomes, not just square footage and lease terms.

Real estate is the means to an end, and the end is the business working and the business goals being achieved.

So if you keep that orientation, you're always gonna be relevant, and you're gonna be very effective both as a leader and as a contributor to your company.

Second, I would say seek out transformation and opportunities. Don't avoid them.

Early in my career, I could have stayed in more settled environments. I could have said no to opportunities that came my way.

The opposite happened. It led me all the way across the pond, and it took interesting twists and turns along the way considering where I came from from an academic perspective.

I chose the complicated tasks — the integrations, the restructurings. I leaned in. I said, “I'm available. I've got bandwidth.”

I think where you lean in the most is in the markets where nobody has a template, or they haven't quite figured it out yet, and you have a chance to contribute while developing along the way.

That's where you become genuinely indispensable, because not many people want to do that kind of work or deal with that level of uncertainty.

And I think the ones who do it well are definitely remembered for it.

The third thing — and this is particularly for younger leaders — is never underestimate the power of following through.

It is an underestimated and undervalued quality that I think is exceptional in building credibility early in your career: being the one that is reliable.

Reliable is credible as you move along in your career.

And then the last thing I would say is invest in your network.

I mentioned it earlier, and this is not just your network within your company, but your corporate real estate network.

You mentioned CoreNet. Yes, I'm on the global board. It's a fantastic organization that allows you to have a peer group across our industry and across the world.

It's still a relationship business, and there is a lot of intelligence out there in our sector and industry. It's a great way to tap into it.

That kind of knowledge will make you better at your job.

Oftentimes you're sitting with someone you haven't met with before — go meet them, attend an event, find those opportunities to make those connections.

You'll be surprised how frequently you rely on them.

To summarize, I think the leaders that are gonna define the next decade of corporate real estate — especially when we think about AI and the landscape changing and workplace strategy evolving — are the ones who are curious enough to keep learning and confident enough to lead through the ambiguity that will continue to mount around all of us.

Those two things together are rarer than they should be, but those are the secret ingredients, I would say.

Yeah. It's the stuff AI can't replace, and it's the stuff that's not on a job description.

It doesn't show up in your box on the org chart, but it's what makes you a well-rounded and amazing leader.

So Mara, you have imparted some incredible wisdom with us today, so I am super grateful for everything you shared, for your time and your energy. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you, Allison. Thanks to IADO. These are fantastic events to be part of and my point of networking. This is a great opportunity to share some good ideas together, so thank you.

I love it.

Thanks, Mara, and thanks everyone for listening. Check out our next episode coming up in about a month.

Thanks. Bye.