Green Building Activity in Bulgaria with Vessela Valtcheva-McGee

Vessela Valtcheva-McGee, LEED Fellow, LEED AP BD+C AP, BREEAM International Assessor, DGNB auditor and EDGE Auditor.  Vessela has extensive experience with sustainability in both practice and education. With over 10 years of experience in sustainable development, she has both practical hands-on experience with sustainability assessment tools and frameworks in the construction and development sector, and deep theoretical knowledge of business sustainability, policy and education development, and leadership. While working closely with the business sector as a sustainability consultant, Vessela has also been actively involved in changing leadership through the international NGO green building council network. In 2010 Vessela became a founding member on the Board of Directors of the Bulgarian Green Building Council where she is currently President. She works on sustainable policy development, voluntary certification initiatives, and represents the council at the World Green Building Council's Europe Regional Network, a coalition of organizations working together to facilitate industry leadership and drive the transition to a low-carbon, circular economy. Since 2008 Vessela has been a Managing Partner in Triple Green Building Group, LLC - a full service sustainability consulting and education company. Triple Green is one of the first companies recognized as Authorized Education Delivery Partners by the United States Green Building Council, providing the company with a license to deliver professional education curriculum to the international market. Triple Green works with a number of major professional education development companies in the US and Europe to create courses on sustainability and provide both live facilitation and web based education programs, as well as train-the-trainer events. Today, after 10 years of collaboration, the company continues to be a trusted Education Partner of the USGBC. At present, Vessela heads the European branch of Triple Green Group which is based in Sofia, Bulgaria.  In her capacity as a green building consultant who has every recognized credential in the branch, Vessela has had the opportunity to work on numerous green building certification projects of national and international significance. She has personally managed the certification of LEED and BREEAM projects in Bulgaria, Russia, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Mexico and the US. Vessela Valtcheva-McGee holds a Master of Architecture degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design where she is an honorary guest lecturer, and a post-graduate diploma in Business Sustainability from Cambridge University. She has delivered guest lectures on sustainability at Harvard, Berkeley and various universities in Eastern Europe. She is a LEED Fellow, LEED AP BD+C AP, BREEAM International Assessor, DGNB auditor and EDGE Auditor. Vessela is part of a recognized group of change leaders of sustainability in Europe working to coordinate a collaborative sustainable development effort with governments and relevant stakeholders across the region. Show Highlights  Learn what is possible when you are motivated to start off in a different direction and don’t follow business as usual.  What rating tools and criteria does Vessela use to sway clients to meet their desired level of certification.  The green movement depends on where you are but why is the US falling behind Europe? What are the challenges and success does location provide?  Why the green building may quickly be in a place where certification is what we use to be the average.  How the pandemic will provide a radical approach and focus on green building Vessela’s journey of firsts   “It's a great movement. Jump into it and do it with passion and pursue whatever angle in green building you most love and are interested in. And don't be afraid that there's a formula that you have to stick to. That's the beauty of this movement. It's wide open. There's a lot of room for experimentation for exploring paradigm shifts that we've been talking about and haven't quite made yet. There is still a lot of room for growth and great fields. Dive right in. No fear.” -Vessela     Vessela’s Show Resources and Information   Connect with Charlie Cichetti and GBES   GBES is excited our membership community is growing. Consider joining our membership community as members are given access to some of the guests on the podcasts that you can ask project questions. If you are preparing for an exam, there will be more assurance that you will pass your next exam, you will be given cliff notes if you are a member, and so much more. Go to to learn more about the 4 different levels of access to this one-of-a-kind career-advancing green building community! If you truly enjoyed the show, don't forget to leave a positive rating and review on .  We have prepared more episodes for the upcoming weeks, so come by again next week! Thank you for tuning in to the !   Copyright © 2020 GBES