Former WeWork director Greg Miley has been appointed to lead growth at Scottish property technology start-up Desana.
He acted as WeWork’s director of broker and agent development during the company’s biggest period of growth and was responsible for more than half of the sales revenue generated for the European, Middle Eastern and African part of the business.
In his new role as vice president of strategy and growth, Miley is in charge of growth, both in terms of customer acquisition and increasing the number of spaces available worldwide via the Desana platform.
Miley brings 10 years of experience in the flexible office industry. He cut his teeth as a business account manager at Flexioffices, rising to become head of department. He then became head of operator partnerships at The Instant Group, before moving to support WeWork's European expansion.
Over the past year, Miley helped grow revenues to exceed 600% for managed workspace start-up Kitt.
He commented: “The way people want to work and live has drastically changed and businesses have had to adapt to ensure they keep their employees happy, retaining and also attracting the best talent.
“It has taken a global pandemic to show employers that their employees can be trusted and given the autonomy to work where suits them best, on any given day.
“While this huge mindset shift has presented a world of new options for the global workforce, it has simultaneously created challenges for businesses who are not yet set up to empower and effectively manage a distributed workforce,” he continued, adding: “I truly believe that Desana provides the platform to help businesses adapt to the new way of working and fundamentally create a fantastic employee experience.”
This is the first senior hire for the company, with chief executive Michael Cockburn stating: “Like most proptech companies, Desana has the challenge of being an agile technology business while needing to simultaneously keep one foot in the legacy property industry.
“Finding new talent with in depth knowledge of the office space sector without the embedded status quo thinking is something that we are really prioritising in our hiring decisions for Desana’s senior leadership team.
“We’re super excited to be working with Greg given his expertise in the sector as well as his alignment with the direction we’re going in.”
The Edinburgh-based business has developed a hybrid workspace platform, giving companies access to a range of workspaces around the world.
Employees can access everything from hot desks, phone booths, meeting rooms and collaboration spaces to private offices.
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