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 (12 segments)
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Interviewer0:04
So, really for my first question, one of the things I ask all of my interviewees is about the role that innovation plays within the company. Would you mind just expanding a little bit, please, in terms of what that outlook is and that sort of holistic strategy that perhaps you have with Urban Edge Properties?
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Cecilia Li0:28
At Urban Edge Properties, it is in fact part of our culture. If you take the meaning of innovation, it's nothing simple but simply the implementation of new ideas or a new way of thinking. Now, it just so happened that because we live in an era that is tech-driven, it is almost difficult to not think about innovation without technology.
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Interviewer0:57
Yeah, agreed.
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Cecilia Li1:01
So, it is my responsibility as the CIO to find ways to enable innovation in our organization, but to do this we have to be very clear on who we are as a company. And to that end, we as Urban Edge know that we're not a tech firm, but we are a technology-forward company who's not afraid to implement new tools so long as those tools provide solutions to problems and it helps drive NOI, which is net operating income.
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Interviewer1:32
As I've found out just recently, because it seems to be a real focus for other innovators, that is almost one of the core incentives or the core measures of success: what's the impact on net operating income? Would you say that's a fair assumption that it's your mantra, your goal to increase that?
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Cecilia Li1:55
100%. It is what moves the needle, it's the bottom line. And look, it doesn't always have to be about dollar signs, right? It could be about efficiency gains. But if you think about the efficiency gains, ultimately it will have or should have an impact on the bottom line.
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Interviewer2:23
Yeah, and I find it quite interesting. I've talked a lot about the misaligned incentives when it comes to building innovation strategies, and there always does seem to be this quandary and almost battle between short-term incentives and long-term incentives. I would argue that NOI is both a short and a long term, and there is always a risk with innovation of failing very early on. Perhaps we'll come on to that a little bit later. But I also like the fact that you're talking about the values and the culture at Urban Edge Properties about being innovation first, and I think you used the term 'technology forward.' Could you expand on that just a second? I've never really heard that phrase used before.
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Cecilia Li3:10
That didn't I? Sorry, I said I should coin that phrase.
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Interviewer3:18
Yeah, I know. What does it mean?
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Cecilia Li3:21
Well, look, it means like I said, we're not a tech firm. There are companies that are tech firms and then they have a whole division where they have a whole tech arm, and that becomes investment and so forth. For us, we're tech forward in that we embrace technology, we're not afraid of it. Just last year, over the last three years on average, we do about 90 technology initiatives a year. And look, they could be small or large, but I do keep count of all the work that we do. And it's impressive. Imagine that you have a company that has all the different people in the organization, they have their day-to-day operations, and to have the appetite or the time to work on a technology initiative speaks volumes about the culture of our company. We embrace technology because we have gotten to a point where we understand the value technology brings to the organization.
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Interviewer4:31
Yeah, I would think so. And it's like a positive feedback loop, isn't it? If you're technology forward or technology first, it wraps itself around that culture with people thinking about innovation and technology all the time, which then feeds that feedback loop coming around. And later on, if we get to that, I'll... because a lot of it had to do with people.
