General Votel interviews BENS Chicago member Dr. Suzet McKinney, Principal and Director of Life Sciences for commercial real estate developer Sterling Bay. In this role, McKinney helps create urban campus labs and research environments optimized for quality of life. She shares perspectives from her work as a former public health official and educator who literally wrote the book about emergency response (Public Health Emergency Preparedness: A Practical Approach for the Real World.) Votel and McKinney discuss lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic response, decompressing the health care system in Illinois through alternative care facilities, and the intersection of national security and commercial real estate.