Overview:

• Explore how RealPage aligns its HR strategy with innovation, AI, and customer-focused technology to drive success.
• Learn from Ivy Paraluman De Borja’s career journey and her insights on building future-ready talent and leading HR as a strategic business partner.
• Discover howbalancing global standards with local workforce needs helps foster innovation, employee engagement, and long-term organizational growth.

Introduction

In today’s technology landscape, innovation is no longer driven by software alone. It is powered by people.

For RealPage Inc., the leading global provider of AI-enabled software platforms for the real estate industry, business success depends on continuously delivering solutions that help property owners, operators, and investors make smarter decisions through data, automation, and AI.

As technology continues to transform the real estate industry, organizations increasingly recognize that innovation depends as much on people as it does on platforms. For RealPage, HR serves as a strategic driver of that innovation by ensuring the organization attracts exceptional talent, develops future-ready capabilities, embraces AI responsibly, and keeps customer value at the center of every people decision.

This people-first approach has contributed to the company’s reputation as an employer of choice. In 2024, RealPage earned the TITAN Innovation Awards Gold Winner in the Innovation in Services and Solutions – Real Estate category for LOFT™. and they are also recognized as Great Place To Work Certified. They also received the ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year for Sustained Excellence award for four consecutive years from 2021 to 2024.

Ultimately, RealPage’s strategy demonstrates that technology companies do not innovate because they have advanced software. They innovate because they cultivate people who understand customers, embrace continuous learning, and are empowered to create solutions that make meaningful impact.

Ivy Paraluman De Borja, sHRBP, CMHR, Vice President of Human Resources at RealPage Inc., shares her career journey and discusses how the company aligns its people strategy with a business driven by innovation, data, and customer-facing technology.

Interview Transcript:

1.  How did you start your career and lead the way to where you are now with RealPage, Inc.?

Back in 2005, I started as a contractual employee, putting together all the 201 files of a company called Client Logic at the time. So, I used to have daily paper cuts that carbon dates me probably.

 Guess what my age is. But that’s where I started.

Eventually, as I listened to people around me, I realized that there’s the recruiting team who’s always busy, like 24/7 maybe. And I thought I’d love to be a part of that team, and that’s where I got to for my regular stint with the same company. They saw me, they trusted me, and they gave me a regular position as part of the recruiting team, and the rest is history.

2.  As Vice President for Human Resources at RealPage, a global provider of software solutions for real‑estate and property management, how do you align your HR strategy with a company whose success depends so heavily on innovation, data, and customer‑facing technology? 

One of the key terms in the question that you asked is customer or customers, right? And I’ve always believed that people in HR, leaders in HR, are actually business leaders wearing the hat of HR. Nobody wants to hear about HR until that HR person talks about business and how they are going to impact the business positively.

How do we become the trusted partner of our customers?

It’s through the relevance, the value that our services and our products bring, right? In our case, the property management consultants. Those products only work well if the people behind the development, the product development team, understand what the clients and the customers of the clients truly need.

So it is really about being that talent architect as an HR person, or the business leader wearing that HR hat. That’s truly important. We need to understand what the market needs, and how can we fulfill that need through the brilliance, the talents of our people, from talent acquisition to talent development, to nurturing those talents and ensuring that it becomes sustainable, and it grows and evolves through innovation in our products as well as growing the way that we actually service or support our customers. That is really the way to go.

3. With so many opportunities available in Tech, how do you clearly communicate RealPage’s purpose, values, and flexible ways of working in a way that appeals to the right tech candidates and keeps them engaged long‑term in a SaaS (Software‑as‑a‑Service) company? 

The promise of AI is about really making the quality of our lives better. And so, what is better than doing the same, saying the same, to the world basically. We pride ourselves in being a “future-forward-thinker-kind-of-employer” who has the experience of our employees’ top of mind too.

At RealPage, we say, we inspire amazing experiences. That’s what we offer to the users of our products, to our customers. We should think about, every day, keeping the same promise to our employees.

So when we talk about AI Augmentation in the workforce or augmenting processes through the use of agentic AI for example, what we have in mind is not really the efficiency of our processes so that people can do more with less.

That’s not the point. The point is to allow people to focus on what truly matters to the customers without so much laborious work like we used to do in the past before AI. So, it really is inspiring amazing experience as well for our employees.

Because at the end of the day, who would like to come home, depleted of your energy? Nobody, right?

We spend a lot of hours at work, but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t get everything from us. We should be coming home to our families still energized and still centered in the dinner for example or whatever it is the occasion that we need to attend to at home.

4. How do you balance the need for consistent global practices at RealPage with the different workforce expectations in the Philippines versus other markets where the company operates?

That truly is a question that we do not have a “one-size-fits-all” answer for, except I think the principle of having the courage to say what truly works for the region, for the country, for the people in the country, as opposed to just taking in what the headquarters think, or what they believe the process or the approach should be.

As the lead for human resources in the country, I partner with our country manager, as well as the other leaders in the country, to represent what the Filipino people located in the Philippines want and need.

Some of the time, they’re not the same. The work that we do is truly understanding what, as an organization, we are trying to do, and where flexibility may be allowed.

 And then, we thoughtfully find the intersection between what the headquarters’ approach is and what would actually work for the people on the ground.

By now, having the courage, right? Once we have figured out what it is for us, I don’t want to say versus, but respect to, in comparison to what the headquarters want, right? When you clearly see if there is a difference, then you also clearly see where the intersection is.

Now you need to have the courage to say, “Actually, that’s not going to work for us. How about this?”

And I take it a little bit further.

Who said, whoever said, that everything has to come from up there, down here? That’s not even supposed to be the case.

In a discussion, we have as much to say as the people from other locations would have to say. We’re equals.

So there are really times, on a day-to-day basis, when I raise my hand first, volunteer the idea, and let the solution come from the Philippines rather than from other locations, and wait for them to be handed down to us. Because why not?

Conclusion / Recap

Ivy Paraluman De Borja personifies the mindset RealPage needs to turn strategy into sustained impact. As VP of Human Resources, her leadership shows that HR leaders who think like business partners are the ones who build resilient teams that innovate consistently.

At its core, RealPage’s success is a reminder that every breakthrough starts with empowered people. When organizations invest in their employees as much as they invest in innovation, they create lasting value. Not only for customers and the business, but for the communities and industries they serve.

Stay informed with the latest insights on leadership, talent, and the future of work. Visit our Hiring Advice page to discover more perspectives from industry leaders and business executives.