Robert Entin
Executive Vice President and CIO at Vornado Realty Trust
Vornado Realty Trust owns and manages more than 26 million square feet of LEED-certified buildings. Robert Entin is the person who knows as much as anyone about the technology that goes into running the company’s corporate and building networks as well as the software stack and technology backbone required to run Vornado and its buildings.
Entin’s duties have placed him in the unique position of being a designer and user, making him one of the progenitors of proptech in the built world.
During his 17-year tenure at Vornado, Entin has brought his academic background — a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from Penn’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering — and hands-on real estate experience to grow and hone the information technology initiatives of the company.
Entin joined Vornado after having founded Integrated Business Systems (IBS) in Clifton, N.J., in 1979. Through his combined technical engineering expertise and his accounting and property management experience, Entin’s IBS provided turnkey technology solutions for the real estate industry, becoming one of the acknowledged industry leaders. In 2013, a portion of the IBS organization joined Vornado.
Entin serves on various advisory councils and is an adjunct professor at Columbia University, where he teaches a master’s course called “IT & the Real Estate Enterprise.”
Vornado has a proven history of successfully transforming yesterday’s buildings to meet the needs of current and future users across the portfolio. The company has recently been focused on its gigantic development project in the Penn District around Penn Station.
“The technology in the Penn District provides particular challenges given the size and scope of the development,” Entin said during a conference in December 2021. “We’re putting so much tech right now into Penn 1, and Penn 2 is right around the corner. There are also continued opportunities with Moynihan Station as well. The Penn District is a great connected campus.”
At that time, Entin expressed mixed views about the use of funding for real estate technology. “The real estate industry has traditionally been laggards,” he said. “While previous cycles had a great deal of VC money that did not come to fruition, the industry is more technology-ready today than ever before.” —P.R.
