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From CIO to Orchestrator in Chief: How today’s real estate tech leaders are making change make sense

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Today’s CIOs operate amid sustained complexity. Portfolios are more distributed, data is more interdependent, and expectations from executives, investors, operators, and residents continue to rise. Meanwhile, regulatory pressures, market shifts, consolidation, and the adoption of AI and advanced analytics have made change constant, increasingly reshaping day-to-day workflows.

In recent interviews, real estate technology leaders focused less on individual systems and more on aligning strategy with execution, technology with people, and vision with reality—particularly as they work to make change understandable and actionable across diverse teams.

Today, that alignment extends beyond supporting the business as it exists. CIOs are tasked with defining what the business should look like tomorrow, shaping a technology vision that responds to change while driving decisions and execution in support of long-term strategy. Higher expectations for speed, efficiency, and measurable business impact raise the stakes for how effectively organizations translate insight into action.

Real estate CIOs are seeing a new leadership expectation take shape. They are now acting as Orchestrator in Chief—the executive responsible for translating complexity into coordinated action and helping organizations move forward through continuous change.

The expansion of the CIO mandate in real estate

Real estate CIOs have never been purely technical operators. Aligning technology investments with business goals has always been part of the job.

The scale and scope of the role, however, have expanded. Today’s organizations are more distributed, more data-driven, and more exposed to constant change than ever before. Previously, CIOs were responsible for implementing systems that supported leasing, operations, compliance, and growth. Today, technology touches nearly every workflow, department, and strategic initiative.

As a result, the CIO’s focus has shifted. Less time is spent selecting or maintaining individual systems. More time is spent redesigning processes, guiding adoption, reconciling competing priorities, and aligning leadership around what technology can realistically deliver.

It’s why many real estate technology leaders no longer describe their role narrowly. As one respondent put it:

“More like an Operations Manager, Process Engineer, Change Manager — less technical.”

— Joe Stokes, Group VP & Global Head of Product, CBRE Property Management

The challenge is no longer simply delivering technology. It’s ensuring that technology makes sense to the business and can keep pace with continuous transformation, allowing the organization to operate more effectively and achieve meaningful results.

Why being an “Orchestrator” is now a core leadership skill

As CIOs describe their current reality, it’s clear that success depends less on technical depth and more on the ability to orchestrate complexity into a shared vision.

CIOs transform strategy into workflows that can be executed consistently across assets and regions. They align technology capabilities with the outcomes executives care about, such as risk reduction, efficiency, resilience, and performance. They orchestrate change by framing it in ways that teams can understand and adopt.

This work is not peripheral. In environments defined by continuous change, shared understanding is required for progress. Someone must create alignment across groups and in many organizations, that responsibility now rests with the CIO. When done effectively, this alignment allows organizations to respond more quickly, reduce operational friction, and translate strategy into measurable business impact.

As one technology leader described it, the role increasingly requires calm authority and perspective:

“Adult in a room full of enthusiastic techies. Translator between generations. Calm captain as the corporate plane is flying through turbulence.”

— Tama Huang, Chief Strategy Officer, Cherre

Orchestration, in this sense, isn’t about simplification. It’s about creating clarity and shared understanding across groups and ensuring that technology doesn’t outpace the organization’s ability to absorb change.

Orchestrating change, not managing systems

CIOs today lead through overlapping transformations: modernizing legacy environments, integrating acquisitions, responding to regulatory shifts, supporting evolving tenant expectations, and introducing AI-driven capabilities. These shifts often occur simultaneously, with growing pressure to ensure they deliver tangible improvements rather than added complexity.

In this environment, managing individual tools is not a scalable approach. CIOs must instead orchestrate change across systems and teams, ensuring that initiatives reinforce one another and that progress does not overwhelm the organization.

Orchestration requires judgment. It requires deciding which changes matter now, which can wait, and how to pace transformation so it creates momentum rather than fatigue.

Why platform-centric thinking changes the leadership equation

Platform-driven environments are more than an architectural preference; they serve as a leadership enabler. When systems share context, data, and workflows, less effort is spent explaining how things connect and more effort can be directed toward accelerating outcomes.

This shift moves organizations from disconnected systems of record toward environments where data, workflows, decisions, and execution are more closely aligned.

The real cost isn’t the availability of tools; it’s the effort required to make sense of them:

“Having to sift through the noise to find the right product and company that doesn’t get promptly acquired and change direction has been challenging.”

— Cecilia Li, SVP & Chief Information Officer, Urban Edge Properties

The platform shift doesn’t eliminate the complexity of real estate organizations, but it changes how CIOs spend their time. Less energy is focused on managing fragmentation. More energy can be directed toward guiding transformation, supporting adoption, and ensuring that technology investments translate into meaningful business outcomes.

Developing the next generation of proptech leaders

Looking ahead, the profile of successful real estate technology leaders will continue to evolve. Technical expertise will remain essential, but it will no longer be the primary differentiator.

The next generation of CIOs and proptech leaders will stand out through systems thinking, communication and influence, empathy for how change affects teams, and the ability to connect decisions across domains. Leadership will be measured not by what gets deployed, but by how well organizations adapt over time.

Making change make sense

"Orchestrator in Chief” may not be an official title, but it reflects a growing expectation. As real estate organizations adopt more intelligent, action-oriented operating models, successful CIOs will be those who align people and platforms, connect data with workflows, and translate insight into coordinated execution. Their defining leadership skill will make continuous change understandable, actionable, and purposeful.

Carla Hinson, VP of Global Product Strategy, MRI Software Carla Hinson is VP of Global Product Strategy at MRI Software, helping shape the company's product vision to meet the evolving needs of real estate. She brings 26+ years of proptech experience, previously serving as Executive Managing Director of GCS Global Technology at Newmark and COO and Services Director roles across multiple consulting and software firms. She serves on the MRI Software Foundation Board and was named one of GlobeSt.'s Women of Influence 2025.

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