Weekend Interview: Cambridge Innovation Center COO Melissa Ablett-Jordaan This series gets into the heads of the decision-makers of CRE, the people shaping the industry by setting investment strategy, workplace design, diversity initiatives and more. As an operator of "innovation campuses" full of coworking, private offices and lab space, Cambridge Innovation Center was faced with a daunting challenge in 2020 as the pandemic pushed people away from in-person work and into their homes. CIC Chief Operating Officer Melissa Ablett-Jordaan said the pandemic forced the company to quickly adjust its product to meet the changing needs of users. Part of its adjustment was the August 2020 launch of CIC Health, a new branch of the company that set up and operated at least 180 Covid-19 testing sites, mostly in New England. "We talked about CIC’s offering in one way before Covid-19, and now are learning about all the new ways that coworking, shared office and lab space, that’s high-service and community-focused, can support the new styles of work emerging for all different sizes of businesses," Ablett-Jordaan said. Ablett-Jordaan was promoted in January to the C-suite role at CIC after previously serving as head of its European and Asian centers. She also previously launched CIC's first international location in 2015 in the Netherlands port city of Rotterdam. Founded in 1999 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, CIC now operates 1M SF of coworking, office and lab space across the world. 
With locations in Boston, Cambridge, Miami, Philadelphia, Providence, Rotterdam, St. Louis, Warsaw and Tokyo, CIC's campuses cater to growing startup companies. The startup scene has exploded in Boston and around the world in recent years, with tens of billions of dollars in venture capital investment helping startups grow to become major occupiers of…  Read the full story here. | 
