Robert Peck
Robert A. Peck is a Principal and senior workplace strategist at Gensler, a global architecture and design firm. He is co-leader of the firm’s Government and Defense industry practice. Bob helps public and private sector clients get the maximum performance out of their workplaces, whether a leased space, a building or an entire portfolio. An experienced commercial real estate, nonprofit and public sector executive, he is a nationally recognized advocate for high-quality design, active work environments, smart growth and sustainable building. Bob’s expertise includes leading complex real estate portfolio strategy and public-private development projects.
For five years in the Clinton Administration and nearly three in the Obama Administration, Bob was Commissioner of GSA’s Public Buildings Service. With an annual budget of more than $9 billion and a workforce of 7,000, PBS conducts nationwide asset and property management, design and construction, leasing, and disposals for 375 million square feet of space accommodating more than 1.1 million federal workers. He is known for being instrumental in launching the Design Excellence program, instituting real estate metrics and contemporary workplace design and creating a Green Proving Ground sustainability program.
In the Federal government, Bob has also worked at the Office of Management and Budget, the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House and the Federal Communications Commission. On Capitol Hill, he was associate counsel to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and chief of staff to the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY). He was a Special Forces officer in the U.S. Army Reserve.
In the private sector, Bob has been a land use attorney, a real estate investment executive, and a commercial real estate broker. He was also the full-time president of the 125-year old Greater Washington Board of Trade and vice president for public affairs at the American Institute of Architects.
He received his B.A. cum laude with distinction in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and his J.D. from Yale Law School. He was a visiting Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and a visiting lecturer at Yale College.
The American Institute of Architects and American Society of Landscape Architects have both named him an honorary member. He has received the annual achievement awards of the Washington regional Coalition for Smarter Growth and the DC Building Industry Association. In 2011, he won the Henry Hope Reed Award from the Driehaus Foundation and the University of Notre Dame and in 2012 the Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture from the American Institute of Architects.
He lives in Chevy Chase, DC, with his wife, Lynn Palmer, a DC public high school French teacher. Their two children attended DC Public Schools and have graduated from college.