Senior Manager - Real Estate Strategy and Planning
Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, 60290, USA
Listed on 2026-10-22
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Management
Change Management, Project & Program Management -
Real Estate/Property
Position Overview:
The Cigna Group is seeking an experienced transformational leader to serve as Senior Manager, Portfolio Strategy & Planning within Global Workplace Programs (GWP). This leader will align the company's workplace portfolio, workforce requirements, technology, and business priorities to improve employee experience, portfolio performance, and real estate efficiency. The Senior Manager will lead workplace and occupancy strategies, including space planning, utilization analytics, workplace solutions, and change leadership.
Working across GWP, Human Resources, Enterprise Technology, Finance, and business leadership, this role will translate enterprise priorities into scalable workplace strategies, consistent standards, and actionable portfolio decisions across offices and other workplace environments. The ideal candidate combines strategic judgment, analytical problem-solving, broad functional knowledge, and strong execution discipline. The role requires an enterprise mindset, excellent communication skills, and the emotional intelligence to build alignment across diverse stakeholders while leading teams through complex change.
- Develop and maintain a 5- to 10-year workplace and real estate portfolio strategy aligned with enterprise, workforce, talent, and financial priorities.
- Collaborate on the global occupancy and space planning capability, establishing consistent demand-planning processes, space standards, governance, and service delivery expectations.
- Evaluate portfolio, workforce, and utilization data to recommend optimal square footage, employee-to-desk ratios, collaboration capacity, adjacencies, workplace zoning, and site-level solutions.
- Translate business growth, organizational change, workforce forecasts, and attendance expectations into actionable occupancy plans and real estate requirements.
- Advise senior leaders on portfolio utilization, workplace investments, sequencing decisions, trade-offs, risks, and actions required to align the physical footprint with enterprise strategy.
- Facilitate cross-functional planning and prioritization across GWP functions, including portfolio strategy, transactions, design, workplace experience, facilities operations, capital project delivery, analytics, governance, and change leadership.
- Establish enterprise workplace principles and standards that balance employee experience, business purpose, operational resilience, cost, and flexibility.
- Build change leadership and stakeholder-engagement roadmaps that prepare leaders and employees for workplace, occupancy, and portfolio changes and support successful adoption.
- Identify and implement leading practices, tools, benchmarks, and process improvements that strengthen workplace strategy and occupancy management performance.
- Measure outcomes through clearly defined portfolio, utilization, employee experience, financial, and delivery metrics, and communicate progress to senior leadership.
- Bachelor's degree in business, real estate, architecture, planning, operations management, analytics, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
- Demonstrated experience leading workplace strategy, occupancy planning, space planning, portfolio planning, or a closely related corporate real estate function.
- Experience translating business and workforce requirements into long-range portfolio and workplace strategies.
- Strong analytical capability and demonstrated success using data to solve complex problems, evaluate alternatives, and support executive decisions.
- Proven ability to build trusted relationships and collaborate across business, HR, Technology, Finance, and real estate stakeholders.
- Strong executive communication and presentation skills, with the ability to make complex concepts clear, concise, and actionable.
- Ability to lead challenging conversations calmly, objectively, and with a solutions-oriented approach.
- Strong organizational, prioritization, and time-management skills, with the ability to move between strategic direction and execution detail.
- Master's degree in business, real estate, architecture, planning, organizational change, or a related discipline.
- Experience leading enterprise-wide business integration, workplace transformation, portfolio optimization, or technology-enabled operating model initiatives.
- Experience with workplace and portfolio technology platforms, utilization analytics, scenario modeling, and performance reporting.
- Demonstrated…
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