Design the Future

Renée Cheng is an architect and dean of the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. She pioneered research surrounding the intersection of design and emerging technologies and is a leader in the American Institute of Architects around equity in the profession and practice. She led the research effort for AIA guides for equitable practice. She  sees students as partners, and...

Fiona Cousins, a mechanical engineer by training, is the Americas Chair for Arup, guiding a 1,900-person engineering, design, consulting, and planning firm with a focus on collaborating and innovating to shape a better world. Fiona and her teams take a broad view as they pursue value for clients, considering climate change, social equity, and biodiversity.  As a longtime leader in the field, Fiona...

Marnese Jackson is an environmental and climate justice activist, advocate, trainer, and educator in Pontiac, Michigan. This mother of two is the co-director of the Midwest Building Decarbonization Coalition, which focuses on inspiring and educating Midwesterners to end new installations of fossil fuel equipment in residential and commercial buildings by 2030, and to achieve zero emissions from th...

Stephanie Greene has just stepped down from a role as managing director at RMI, where she led the Buildings Program. She also helped launch RMI's building electrification initiative, which is focused on enabling a cost-effective, sustainable, and equitable path to building decarbonization, with work spanning the U.S., China, and India. We talked to her about this work, her previous work at PG...

Davida Herzl is co-founder and CEO of Aclima, where she leads a team pioneering a new way to diagnose the health of our air and track pollution. A Public Benefit Corporation, Aclima measures air pollution and greenhouse gasses with block-by-block resolution. The company's enterprise software, Aclima Pro, translates billions of scientific measurements into analytics for companies, governments,...

Rochelle Routman is Chief Sustainability and Impact Officer of HMTX Industries, a resilient flooring manufacturer. She has been passionate about the environment since a young age, and brought that into her work through corporate sustainability. She saw an opportunity to bring greater transparency into flooring products, helping to advance industry-wide disruption. Today, she is working on ESG; HMT...

Sandy Mendler is an architect, planner, and researcher focused on creating new models for healthy, sustainable living. She is a design industry thought leader and dynamic project leader; at Gensler, she is a principal, studio director, and regional practice leader for education. She previously worked at Mithun (where she was part of a Bay Area Resilient by Design team in the Rockefeller Brothers F...

Lakisha Ann Woods is the executive vice president and CEO of the American Institute of Architects, a network of 94,000 architects and design professionals (in 200 chapters) who are committed to enhancing the built environment. Woods previously served as president/CEO of the National Institute of Building Sciences and as senior VP/CMO at the National Association of Home Builders.  Architects are na...

Carrie Meinberg Burke is an architect, designer, artist, and inventor whose work is infused with research into light, ecology, health, human sensory perception, and biomimicry. She runs Parabola Architecture with her husband, Kevin Burke. They work at all scales, and one recent workplace project was described, by its Google owners, as “a building with a soul.” Carrie is co-developing an innovative...

Marsha Maytum is a founding principal at Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects. Her career is steeped in a passionate belief in the value and power of architecture and design. With her husband, Bill Leddy, and their partner, Richard Stacy, Marsha has created a teaching practice structured to focus on mission-driven work. They are co-authors of Practice with Purpose: A Field Guide to Mission-Driven Design...

Nakita Reed is an architect with experience in preservation, restoration, and adaptive reuse of historic buildings with a focus on sustainable strategies; she is an Associate with Quinn Evans Architecture and works from their Baltimore office. She is also the host of Tangible Remnants, a podcast exploring the intersection of architecture, preservation, sustainability, race, and gender. For Nakita,...

Chandra Robinson is a principal at LEVER Architecture, a Portland, Oregon-based design practice recognized for material innovation. She came to architecture by way of geology, physics, and kayaking. She is passionate about creating beautiful spaces that are accessible for everyone and enjoys working closely with clients to create designs that express their values -- and we had a great time talking...

Bomee Jung is co-founder/co-CEO of Cadence OneFive, a public benefit corporation with a climate justice mission. They are developing, Momentum, a software to enable city-scale acceleration of existing building decarbonization. Before this role, Bomee was the first VP for Energy and Sustainability at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), and before that she led the climate mitigation and ada...

Frances Yang is a Structures and Sustainability Specialist at Arup. In addition to her work on projects defining embodied carbon leadership, she has been a mobilizer and leader in the movement, serving on the Carbon Leadership Forum Board, vice chairing the Structural Engineers 2050 Commitment, and co-founding the All for Reuse Initiative, among a host of other advocacy work. Frances talked about...

Jane Abernethy, Chief Sustainability Officer at Humanscale, started as an industrial designer. As such, she has always thought about sustainability, which she sees as part of the inherent challenge of design at all scales. Jane has spent a lot of time thinking about how to evolve a company from within. She prefers to talk about results rather than aspirations; in this era of hyperbole and greenwas...

Claire Maxfield directs Atelier Ten’s San Francisco office, which works, as a consultant to architects or owners, on an incredible range of large, complex, and environmentally ambitious projects —  buildings, landscapes, and master plans. She has been integral to many significant green building milestones in the US and beyond.  We talked to her about what it is like to be a full-time green buildin...

Architect Adele works at the intersection of public health, climate change, and the built environment. She is co-authoring a book, Architectural Epidemiology, which lays out a methodology for designing and operating buildings that respond to the specific environmental and human health needs of people in individual neighborhoods.  Adele has been working in the green building movement for years; ear...

Architect Laurie Kerr is a national leader in sustainable building and climate policy. She is Principal Climate Advisor at USGBC and the president of LK Policy Lab. She was NYC’s Deputy Director for Green Building Policy under Bloomberg, and helped develop the city's influential sustainability plan and policies.  Laurie was an early advocate for the idea that “buildings matter” in terms of en...

Architect Arathi Gowda leads ZGF's East Coast Sustainability Practice. She is an advocate for collective climate action and is the current co-chair of US Architects Declare and a member of the American Institute of Architects’ Committee on the Environment Leadership Group. Arathi was at SOM for 20 years in Chicago before moving recently to her new role, and her move to DC reflects her ambitio...

As VP of Sustainability Consulting at Stok, Devon advises clients on sustainability for their building portfolios, consulting with major organizations on carbon, ESG, and more. She recently authored Stok’s Sustainable Real Estate Program Handbook, a multi-year, collaborative effort focused on driving faster change.  “This work can be heavy,” she says. “You have to stay hopeful and be curious.” She...

When we think about conservation and historic preservation, we often think first of land and buildings. But Juli Polanco’s work is putting people, culture, and climate at the center of those topics.  We talked to Juli about her work as State Historic Preservation Officer for California, her role founding and leading the Climate Heritage Network, and her involvement with the Urban Land Institute’s...

Gina Ciganik is CEO of the Healthy Building Network, which is known for research and guidance around products and green chemistry. Gina is recognized as a national leader in transforming human and environmental health through strategic partnerships, innovative business practices, capacity building, and novel approaches. Having jumped from one career (affordable housing development) to another (pub...

“I have always seen sustainability and social concerns as part of design,” says architect Angie Brooks. This perspective is rooted, in part, in her undegrad architectural studies that emphasized regionalism. And since her early days in practice, Angie has felt that architects should shape the framework within which they work. Her career and practice, with partner Larry Scarpa, shows how architects...

Lotte Schlegel is the Executive Director of the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT), a national nonprofit organization focused on equitably decarbonizing buildings through policies and programs that increase demand and action for high-performing buildings. She’s also a co-founder and board member of ecountabl, which helps people support causes they care about when they bank and shop. Lotte d...

Susan Szenasy is one of the best known design critics and editors of the past four decades; she served as editor of Metropolis magazine from the mid 1980s until a few years ago. In 2017, she was the winner of a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award. During her tenure, Metropolis became one of the most expansive design publications in the American media landscape -- covering all disciplines and tackl...