Rick Huijbregts leads Digital Transformation business development and sales acceleration through rolling out innovative and business-relevant industry solutions at Cisco in the Americas. He oversees a geographically distributed team of industry experts that help connect the role of technology and innovation with that of delivering business outcomes to Cisco’s customers.
The team’s priority industries include manufacturing, healthcare, retail, energy, financial services, real estate and Smart and Connected Communities. Rick himself has been a leader of the Urban Innovation movement in Canada for the past 7 years, which earned him the exclusive Queen Elizabeth Royal Jubilee Award. Rick’s responsibilities further include the Go-to-Market for the Internet of Things; defining and creating new and creative industry partnerships; industry thought leadership on business transformation in the digital world; Industry and City Digitization business development; and overseeing one of Cisco’s nine worldwide Innovation Centres.
Rick started at Cisco in 2005 as a member of Cisco’s corporate real estate team, after which he served for three years in various business development roles focusing on the real estate sector in the United States, Canada, and Emerging Markets [Russia, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Central and South America] regions.
Prior to joining Cisco, Rick was co-founder and CEO at Edificium (an internet based construction collaboration platform) and executive director of the Center for Design Informatics at the Harvard Design School. In these roles, Rick has worked at the intersection innovation, technology, and real estate, supporting his passion to modernize and digitize the design, construction, and real estate industry.
For numerous years more, Rick promoted and implemented business transformation initiatives with international clients like AEW Capital (USA), McGraw-Hill Construction (USA), Aukett Architects (UK), and Capital Planning Technologies (Canada).
Rick holds a bachelor’s degree in construction management from Tilburg Polytechnic University (Netherlands), a master’s degree in real estate development and project management from Delft University (Netherlands), and a doctorate from Harvard University (USA) with a specialization in real estate technology and investment management.
Rick currently is Faculty member at the Harvard University GSD Executive Education (USA) focusing on topics of Smart Cities and Smart Buildings; is Executive-in-Residence as well as Chair for the Building Automation Program Advisory Committee at George Brown College (Canada); serves on the industry advisory board for the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering department at the University of Toronto (Canada). Rick is also founding member on the Evergreen CityWorks Leaders Council.
Rick was named “top 35 people to watch” in the industry by Realcomm, and received a prestigious DigieAward from the real estate industry.
Rick lives with his wife and two sons in Toronto, Ontario (Canada).
Dr. Rick Huijbregts’ website
Dr. Rick Huijbregts’ Bio