Photos by Casey Dunn
Professional learning platform adds space and employees in key hub
Open house later today with civic and business leaders and GLG Social Impact Fellows Aunt Bertha and TreeHouse
Austin, Texas; July 27, 2016 — GLG (Gerson Lehrman Group, Inc.), the world’s leading platform for professional learning, today opened its innovative new office in Austin, Texas, nearly doubling its footprint as it continues its rapid growth here. The new Austin office is the firm’s second largest. It was designed by award-winning architect Clive Wilkinson, who also designed GLG’s global headquarters in New York City. Both GLG locations are among the largest North American implementations of activity-based working, a flexible and collaborative approach that makes for more creative and comfortable work environments.
“Our mission is to transform the way the world’s top professionals share expertise and learn while being one of the best places to work,” said GLG President and CEO Alexander Saint-Amand. “This new office extends our commitment to Austin, while helping us continue to deliver on our mission and supporting our people.”
Today GLG will host an open house at the new office with local civic, business, and social sector leaders. CEO Saint-Amand and architect Wilkinson will be joined by two Austin-based social entrepreneurs who are GLG Social Impact Fellows: Jason Ballard, who is the CEO, President, and Co-Founder of TreeHouse, a home design and performance company focused on health, sustainability, quality, and responsibility; and Erine Gray, who founded and leads Aunt Bertha, which uses technology to make human service program information more accessible to people and programs. The Social Impact Fellowship offers top social sector leaders free access to GLG’s learning platform in order to answer their organizations’ most important strategic and operational questions.
The ten-year lease covers 41,803 square feet and the entire fifteenth and sixteenth floors of 301 Congress Avenue in Downtown Austin, which is owned by CommonWealth Partners. GLG previously occupied 24,279 square feet on lower floors of 301 Congress. GLG’s new office incorporates locally-sourced materials and craftwork and connects its two floors by a large atrium with a central staircase, echoing the design of GLG’s New York headquarters. It also includes LED lighting, acoustic ceiling tile and carpets from recycled and 100% recyclable materials, and green guard-certified Zodiaq Quartz surfaces.
GLG Austin – like the company’s offices in New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., and London – will employ activity-based working, an innovative concept that eschews assigned personal workspaces for a more flexible and productive approach to work life. Employees can choose from multiple types of private meeting and collaboration spaces, conference and training spaces, and a staffed coffee bar.
“Employees might be giving up their personal desks, but they gain the entire office,” explained architect Wilkinson, the president and design director of Clive Wilkinson Architects. “By 2030 pretty much everyone will be working this way, so why not go there now?”
Clive Wilkinson Architects is an award-winning design firm responsible for Google’s corporate headquarters, Googleplex, and the “Superdesk” for the Barbarian Group’s New York offices, among other projects. In 2014, GLG moved into their CWA-designed global headquarters in New York City. The office was featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, Interior Design, and Fast Company, among other publications.
GLG was founded in 1998 to serve professionals who needed perspective they couldn’t find in one-size-fits-all industry reports, courses, or conferences. Today GLG facilitates thousands of connections a week between the world’s leading investors, entrepreneurs, corporations, consulting firms, nonprofits, and startups and a teaching membership of 425,000 policy specialists, academics, engineers, former C-level managers, professional leaders, and other subject matter experts.
CWA was supported by local architects STG Design, led by PollyAnna Little. Aquila Commercial’s Todd Tebbe managed the project for GLG.
About GLG / Gerson Lehrman Group
GLG is the world’s leading platform for professional learning. Business leaders, investors, consultants, social entrepreneurs, and other top professionals rely on GLG to learn in short- and long-term engagements from more than 425,000 members and other experts. Clients partner with GLG to address their most complex strategic challenges, make better business decisions, and advance their careers through conversations, mentorships, small group convenings, surveys, and other interactions—all within a rigorous compliance framework. Global, technology-driven, and nimble, GLG’s approximately 1,100 employees work in 22 offices in 12 countries. For more information visit www.GLG.it.
Contact: press@glg.it