Lisa Cations, MRICS, is a flexible workspace and coworking expert with more than 20 years of commercial and operational real estate experience, including global sales, growth and transformation leadership roles across some of the world’s leading flexible office businesses. She is the Founder and Managing Director of JCR Advisors, an independent advisory firm specialising in helping investors, landlords and developers deliver returns from flexible and managed workspace across London, the wider UK and Ireland.

With deep knowledge of the London, UK regional, and Dublin flex markets, Lisa advises institutional investors, landlords, developers, private equity firms and family offices on flex strategy and feasibility, financial underwriting and benchmarking, the development and optimisation of landlords’ in-house flex operations, and third-party flex operator selection and competitive tender processes. She also advises on commercial and operating structures designed to protect landlord returns, including management agreements and hybrid leases, and provides ongoing operator performance oversight and improvement to deliver required commercial outcomes.

Prior to founding JCR Advisors, Lisa held senior international roles at Cushman & Wakefield, JLL and CBRE spanning development, valuation, corporate occupier advisory, and investment banking, as well as leadership positions with major flexible workspace operators including IWG, Industrious and Hana, CBRE’s flexible workspace platform. Her experience across both real estate advisory and flex operations gives her a distinctive understanding of how to align the interests of owners, investors and operators to drive sustainable asset-level performance. Lisa holds MBA degrees from Columbia Business School and London Business School, a Master’s in Real Estate Investment and Finance from the University of Reading, and is a Member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS). She has contributed research on flexible office models to Columbia Business School and Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and has lectured on flexible workspace and operational real estate.

Lisa is also Chair of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) UK Innovation Product Council, where she leads a think tank of senior real estate industry leaders exploring the adoption of technology and AI across the real estate investment lifecycle, operational real estate, and the emergence of innovative business and operating models enabled by technology, AI and transformation. The Council brings together senior perspectives from across the industry to examine how innovation can enhance investment decision-making, transform real estate operations, improve asset performance and drive long-term value creation.