Jacob Bates is the CEO of CommonGrounds. In this role, he is leading the evolution and accelerating the growth of their Workplace-as-a-Service(WaaS) tailored enterprise-grade solutions in human-centric environments for occupiers, investors and owners.
Jacob has a passion for the future of work and shaping tomorrow’s workplace and leaders. He has 20 years of experience leading global enterprise corporate real estate portfolios, and workplace solutions. He has directly lead portfolios consisting of 5 to 20 million square feet for Nike, Cigna, Unity, and CBRE. Jacob provided the executive leadership for these Fortune 500 multinational companies, providing direction on global real estate operations, location strategies, design, construction, and workplace experience initiatives. Throughout his career, Jacob has directly led the opening and the operations of thousands of locations throughout the US and in more than 70 countries globally.
Jacob has participated as a speaker and as a panelist on topics such as workplace-as-a-service, coworking, corporate real estate, leadership, the future of work and workplace. More recently, Jacob has delivered speeches at CRETech 2018, World Forum FDI 2018, CoreNet SoCal 2018, Future Offices 2017, among others.
Jacob holds degrees in Business Management & International Finance. At his leisure, Jacob enjoys long-distance running, horseback riding and spending time with his family.