About Cecilia Li
Cecilia Li, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Urban Edge Properties, has described innovation as the implementation of new ideas and a new way of thinking, stating that it is part of the company's culture. She has characterized Urban Edge as a "technology-forward" company that is not afraid to implement new tools, provided they solve problems and help drive net operating income. Li has said that on average over the last three years the company has undertaken about 90 technology initiatives annually. She has identified cost, time, and buy-in as the biggest challenges in innovation, noting that in the current economy it is difficult to justify spending on solutions with uncertain returns and that people are busy with daily operations, making time for side projects a challenge. Li has emphasized the importance of communication, stating it is the key to success, and has described her leadership philosophy as requiring a strong work ethic, building a "village" of collaborators, and taking care of that village.
Li has discussed her personal journey, noting she began her career as a help desk intern at a real estate brokerage company and later led a business transformation that included an e-commerce launch that generated in one hour what had previously taken an entire day. She has said that many leadership roles like hers are generated for the person and did not exist beforehand. Li has also discussed the importance of including the business in decision-making and design, citing a mistake where a business intelligence dashboard was built without sufficient input and was rejected by the leasing team and CFO. She has stated that people will embrace change if their problems are truly solved and that the goal is to change behavior, not just technology. Li has noted that Urban Edge has an ESG committee chaired by the head of Asset Management and that the company outsources its development, infrastructure, and cybersecurity teams.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Cecilia Li's recent appearances.
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Transcript (7 segments)
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Interviewer0:04
Let's take a little look outside of that Urban Edge side. I'm really interested, and I know a lot of the people that are listening to these interviews are always interested in the personal journey that these innovators have. So I'm just wondering, what did your journey look like to become the CIO at Urban Edge Properties? What journey did you go on?
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Cecilia Li0:30
Oh, all right. Depends how far back I should go. But I didn't really start thinking that I was going to become a technologist. In fact, it was a completely different career path. It was on a fashion design path, which clearly I did not do. But at the time when the technology internet boom happened, I realized that this was something interesting and I decided to join that path. And I started as an intern for a real estate brokerage company as a help desk.
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Interviewer1:10
Oh wow, so you really were right at the bottom of the entire stack.
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Cecilia Li1:16
Oh yeah, at the very bottom. And it's funny because you have the dates of the day-to-day problem solution, but one thing that intrigued me was how is it that people are still working on pen and paper and trying to solve business problems with so much paper? And I also like to observe. One thing that caught my mind is I was looking at how the CIO of the time at that company was operating and the reaction of the clients, the brokers. What I noticed is that people wanted to change, wanted things that work for them, that will make their lives easier, but they wanted to be communicated with. They wanted to know every single step of the journey and they wanted to be included in it. And that piqued my interest. So I spent several years in that company and changed roles in that company. And I was very fortunate because the CIO of the company saw something in me and said to me, 'Cecilia, there's an opportunity at this company where they're looking for an IT manager. You should really give it a shot.' And I did. I was very young, I was 24 years old, and I had my first management role. And oh my goodness, I was very fortunate because they hired me saying, 'We have a few issues with our emails and we have a terrible website.' And I said, 'Sure, I handle that all the time. That seems easy. Let me take a look.' I joined the company and what I realized is that they have a website that really needs some help, but what's driving your website is your database, and your database is a mess. How do you do e-commerce when your database is just not in top shape? So that became a whole ERP system journey, which then led to the business transformation actually. And to my surprise, from an e-commerce standpoint, the company had programs, and in a given day they had an opening and people would line up two blocks around the building to sign up for the program. And when we launched our new e-commerce site, the number of revenue that it took us an entire day to receive, we got it within one hour. And I was like, 'Wow, this is really exciting.'
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Interviewer4:26
Yeah. But how did you then go from that into the Urban Edge role that you've got now? Was it a role that was created for you, was it one that was there and you were headhunted in? How did that come about?
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Cecilia Li4:40
Let me think about this for a second. I was actually on my maternity leave at the time and I was looking for a job. And I realized that there was a company called Urban Edge Properties that had a position open, and it was looking for exactly what I had done prior to my maternity leave job. I was working for a private equity in high street retail as the head of technology for that company. And I'm like, 'Oh my goodness, this is exactly what I want.' And I reached out to the company. I was very lucky. This is a very small industry, and at the time there were many people that I knew that worked for that company and that were consulting for that company. So I got the pleasure to meet the executive team. Apparently they liked me, and I'm still here.
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Interviewer5:48
It is amazing. In a lot of the work that I've done over the last couple of years understanding the innovators more, and in particular the innovative roles that they have, I find it quite fascinating about how many of those leadership roles like yours are almost generated for that person. They haven't had that role beforehand. And it's a really interesting discussion to have with the people perhaps that have had to build out their roles and build out their job descriptions as to what they look like. So I still think we're in that time of the market, and we will be probably for four or five years as the industry starts to try to understand how it develops from here with roles like yours.
