Oct 6, 2026 · 26 min · 13 segments
Drew DePriest, MCR.w is Director of Workplace Services at Salesforce and part of the IFMA Global Board of Directors where he is passionate about operating at the intersection of facilities management…
Drew DePriestGuest
Mike PetruskyHost
What are you most focused on? What are you thinking about here in the fall of 2026, Drew?
Biggest thing for me, and I've had this conversation, this is not going to be a surprise.
If it's local, if mid-chapter events, if it's, you know, on different messaging forums, LinkedIn, coming up at Cornette, just the rapid evolution of what technology is doing to our space right now is, I've been in for 20 years, like I said, this is the craziest thing I've seen in 22 years.
in both wonderfully promising as well as some very valid, slightly concerning ways of how do we take this thing that seems to change every 30 days and, A, find ways to standardize it, to share use cases with each other of how we're doing this thing, but then also how do we not let it take away really the core of what FM and workplace happens to be, and that's acting in service of... every single person that steps foot in this building every day.
I've been going there for a decade since it was, I think it started as a Slack channel and then evolved into a website.
As you might imagine, there's more and more conversations these days around, you know, how are you leveraging AI? Is it hype? Is it a real thing? And I saw a couple of notes just in the last couple of days of people starting to share of, you know, we're using it to analyze work order data and find patterns and trends that we normally wouldn't have seen and using it to loop in context from emails and DMs and, you know, really make us be more contextually aware of how the building's operating.
It helps that I work at a company on the leading edge of leveraging AI for just about everything.
But even in the past year, nine to 12 months, it's just the, the tenor has, has changed in a more productive manner to me.
So yeah, it's, that's, it's not quite all day, every day, but that's a big majority.
And I'm going to use my improv speaking of Chicago, second city, you know, comedy headquarters of the U S and North America in many ways.
And, and, At the same time, I feel this obligation to ask you how my audience of workplace leaders, whether they're in the FM role or a corporate real estate executive or a practitioner that's just trying to run their built environment on a day-to-day basis.
And a lot of the – The AI infusion, the technology, the change, it's daunting, as you mentioned.
It could be a little bit frightening, a little bit daunting staying on top of these things.
What are you most focused on? What are you thinking about here in the fall of 2026, Drew?
Biggest thing for me, and I've had this conversation, this is not going to be a surprise.
If it's local, if mid-chapter events, if it's, you know, on different messaging forums, LinkedIn, coming up at Cornette, just the rapid evolution of what technology is doing to our space right now is, I've been in for 20 years, like I said, this is the craziest thing I've seen in 22 years.
in both wonderfully promising as well as some very valid, slightly concerning ways of how do we take this thing that seems to change every 30 days and, A, find ways to standardize it, to share use cases with each other of how we're doing this thing, but then also how do we not let it take away really the core of what FM and workplace happens to be, and that's acting in service of... every single person that steps foot in this building every day.
I've been going there for a decade since it was, I think it started as a Slack channel and then evolved into a website.
As you might imagine, there's more and more conversations these days around, you know, how are you leveraging AI? Is it hype? Is it a real thing? And I saw a couple of notes just in the last couple of days of people starting to share of, you know, we're using it to analyze work order data and find patterns and trends that we normally wouldn't have seen and using it to loop in context from emails and DMs and, you know, really make us be more contextually aware of how the building's operating.
It helps that I work at a company on the leading edge of leveraging AI for just about everything.
But even in the past year, nine to 12 months, it's just the, the tenor has, has changed in a more productive manner to me.
So yeah, it's, that's, it's not quite all day, every day, but that's a big majority.
And I'm going to use my improv speaking of Chicago, second city, you know, comedy headquarters of the U S and North America in many ways.
And, and, At the same time, I feel this obligation to ask you how my audience of workplace leaders, whether they're in the FM role or a corporate real estate executive or a practitioner that's just trying to run their built environment on a day-to-day basis.
And a lot of the – The AI infusion, the technology, the change, it's daunting, as you mentioned.
It could be a little bit frightening, a little bit daunting staying on top of these things.
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