The Green Building Matters Podcast with Charlie Cichetti

The Green Impact Report Quick take: LEED used to be the strategy. Now it's one of maybe 20 tools. Marianna Palmour went from reviewing LEED projects to building a corporate ESG program from scratch at a 5,000-person firm, and she explains why your biggest clients' Scope 3 targets are about to become your problem. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Marianna Palmour leads corporate sustaina...

📝 The Green Impact Report Quick take: The future of high-performance buildings isn't necessarily about adding more technology — it's about making smarter decisions. Mechanical engineering leader Dale Garfield breaks down why fundamentals, heat pumps, renewable-ready infrastructure, and owner-focused design matter as buildings move toward a lower-energy future. 🤝 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability C...

🌎 The Green Impact Report Quick take: What happens when AI adoption runs headfirst into energy constraints? Josh Rainbow sees technology, infrastructure, power, and sustainability becoming increasingly interconnected — and believes the winners will be the people who can turn emerging technology into measurable business outcomes. From running an AI-native company with roughly 250 AI agents to brin...

💟 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Sustainability targets are easy to announce. Making buildings actually perform against them? That's where things get complicated. Etrit Demaj makes the case that the next phase of green building will be powered by real-time operational data, interoperable building systems, and AI — not another static report. 👨‍🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Etri...

✅ The Green Impact Report Quick take: What if the greenest building innovation isn't waiting around the corner — it's already here? New Energy Works founder Jonathan Orpin makes the case for building better now, using durable timber structures, wood-fiber insulation, off-site construction, and mass timber to tackle carbon without sacrificing craft or economics. 👨‍🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainabili...

✅ The Green Impact Report Quick take: David Gottfried co-founded USGBC, wrote the first white paper proposing a US rating system, and lit the fuse on what became LEED. Now, 30+ years and 30 billion square feet later, he's back with a bigger question: if we can green every building on Earth and still miss the climate targets, what have we forgotten? 👨‍🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion D...

💚 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Marty Rozmanith spent seven years writing the requirements for Revit — the tool that runs $1.2B a year in the AEC industry — and now he's building what comes after it. His pitch: pair AI with discrete engineering solvers so every design choice is explainable, not just fast, and use that to strip the padding owners quietly add to every project "just in case."...

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Sustainable buildings aren't just about reducing carbon anymore. In this episode, Annie Bevan explains why the next generation of Green Building Leaders must evaluate materials through multiple lenses — including climate, human health, social equity, biodiversity, and circularity — to make smarter, business-driven decisions that accelerate industry-wide impac...

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Sustainability isn't just about reducing carbon or earning certifications — it's about creating places where people can thrive. In this episode, Brian Bollinger shares how green building, technology, AI, waste reduction, and thoughtful community design all work together to create healthier buildings, stronger businesses, and more resilient communities. 🎓 Mee...

✅ The Green Impact Report Quick Take: Concrete is responsible for building nearly every community on earth—and it's also one of the biggest opportunities to reduce embodied carbon. In this episode, Kerry Sutton explains why the future isn't about finding one miracle material. It's about educating the entire industry, embracing innovation responsibly, and collaborating across every stakeholder to...

💚 The Green Impact Report Quick take: The next chapter of sustainability isn't about making individual buildings slightly better — it's about redesigning entire communities. Vincent Martinez explains why the future of decarbonization depends on collaboration, adaptive reuse, electrification, and thinking beyond the building itself. 🫶 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Vincent Martinez is t...

✅ The Green Impact Report Quick take: Dave Hubka has spent 20+ years turning "up to code" into "why would we settle for that?" — and his approach of building sustainability directly into the spec (instead of waiting for a client to ask) is a playbook every green building professional can steal. 🤝 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Dave Hubka is the Sustainability Practice Leader at EUA, wh...

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Only 3% of people on a building project can actually open a BIM file — Ken Rhee is fixing that, and using AI and sensors to turn "as-built" data into real-time building intelligence that pays off in energy, insurance, and asset value. 🤩 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Ken Rhee Joined VIM Build in Atlanta, GA as President at the beginning of January,...

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: After 42 years at HKS, Kirk Teske reflects on a career that helped shape sustainable design at scale. From leading one of the earliest LEED pilot projects to influencing generations of architects, Kirk shares why responsible design, stakeholder engagement, and courageous leadership remain the foundation of a better built environment. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Susta...

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick Take: What happens when a LEED Fellow entrepreneur, a Fortune 500 technology executive (turn investor), and a startup growth strategist sit down to discuss the future of building design? You get an inside look at how AI is reshaping architecture, construction, ownership, and the economics of the built environment. In this special episode, Charlie Cichetti, Robin Bi...

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: AI, data centers, and digital infrastructure are transforming the built environment faster than most of us realize. In this episode, Anya Eydman explains why the future of decarbonization isn't just about technology—it's about trust, education, community engagement, and helping buildings become active participants in a cleaner, more resilient energy ecosystem...

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: What happens when sustainability stops being about buzzwords — and starts being about healthier kids, stronger schools, and lower operational costs? Architect Bob Morris breaks down how net-zero schools, biophilic design, and human-centered architecture are reshaping the future of education. 🙋 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion **Bob is an architect wh...

♻️ The Green Impact Report Quick take: Tanya Eagle has spent her career proving that sustainability isn't a "nice to have" — it's a smarter way to design, operate, and future-proof buildings. In this episode, the LEED Fellow and JLL sustainability leader shares why the future of green building is bigger than certifications and how decarbonization, wellness, resilience, and material health are conv...

✅ The Green Impact Report Quick take: Most schools talk about sustainability. Jesse Michalski helped build one that actually runs on it. In this episode, the longtime electrician and renewable energy specialist breaks down how a Wisconsin middle school became a net-zero energy success story —without sacrificing practicality, ROI, or resilience. 🤝 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Jesse Mi...

🎙️ The Green Impact Report Quick take: Most sustainability conversations stop at ambition. Sonal Jain is focused on execution. In this episode, the King's Cross sustainability leader breaks down how one of London's most influential mixed-use estates is turning net-zero commitments into operational reality — through electrification, performance-first thinking, and commercially driven sustainability...

♻️ The Green Impact Report Quick take: Sustainability isn't a feature — it's the baseline. Jennifer Wehling breaks down how Embedding Green Strategies into every decision (not waiting for permission) is how firms scale impact fast. 🤝 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion A licensed architect with over 20 years of experience working on a wide variety of project types, Jennifer Wehling 's experi...

📕 The Green Impact Report Quick take: If you care about scaling sustainability beyond one building at a time, this episode is a Masterclass. Efrie Escott shows how decarbonization, AI, and systems thinking are reshaping the entire built environment — fast. 🤗 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Efrie Escott is the Decarbonization Technical Program Leader at Schneider Electric, promoting stra...

📋 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Green homes aren't just about energy anymore — they're about human health. Paul breaks down why indoor air quality, moisture control, and passive house design are the real game changers for the future of housing. 🫂 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Paul Kealey has spent nearly twenty years redefining what home truly means. As the Founder and President...

🧰 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Greece didn't have a word for "sustainability" — and Sandra Bär helped build an entire Green Building Market anyway. This episode is a playbook for creating impact where infrastructure doesn't exist yet. 🙋‍♂️ Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Sandra Bär is the founder of Beyond Sustainability and a pioneering green building consultant in Greece. Origi...

📕 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Net zero isn't the finish line anymore. Jamy Bacchus explains why whole-life carbon — and better decision-making upstream — is now the real battleground for Green Building Professionals. 👷‍♂️ Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Jamy Bacchus started in the industry in 1995 and in 2016 he joined ME Engineers as a mechanical engineer, energy modeler and su...