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18 SEPTEMBER 2023
Gilead Sciences has opened its new 96,000-square-foot East Coast hub at Parsippany’s Latitude campus, where it has placed a premium on spaces that allow for collaboration and comfort.
Jill Massey was thoughtful yet emphatic as she described the day in early August
that employees arrived at Gilead Sciences’ new office in Parsippany, many of them seeing the space for the first time.
“I wouldn’t be overstating it by saying the atmosphere was electric,” she said, later adding:
“I think maybe there was some trepidation in the beginning because people got used to working remotely. But once they were in the office,
you could hear the buzz, you could see all the collaboration spaces being used. I think people may have
been surprised at how happy they were to see each other again and work together in person, but it’s now easily become our norm in just several weeks.”
For Massey and other Gilead executives, the experience has validated a decision to invest substantially and strategically in new physical workspaces at a time in which many companies — and their employees — are still unsure about how and when to return to the office. Located at Latitude — Vision Real Estate Partners’ sprawling, amenity- laden campus just south of Interstate 80 — the 96,000-square-foot office
serves as the East Coast hub for
the Foster City, California-based biopharmaceutical giant, which
has placed a premium on spaces
that provide “a way for people to transition back into a workspace that doesn’t look like the workspace they left before the pandemic.”
Massey points to the facility’s 17 collaboration areas with soft seating and other features that “really look like your family room, your living room, the places that you’ve spent the last 18 to 24 months during the pandemic trying to do your work.” They all support the company’s belief that “our innovation, our
creativity, our science discoveries come from collaboration” she said, both internally and with its partners in the industry.
“You need a space to do that,” said Massey, Gilead’s vice president for global medical strategic operations. “You can’t do all of that over the communication channels that we had designed for remote working during the pandemic. So when Gilead selected this space, they took particular care to really think about: What will post-pandemic collaboration look like and what will facilitate the most effective innovation and discovery, especially
IN THE RIGHT SPACE
Gilead’s new Parsippany office is a hub of collaboration and comfort — with a purpose
By Joshua Burd
Courtesy: Gilead