Design the Future

Architect and structural engineer Kate Simonen is a leader, teacher, researcher, and convener -- and a big believer in the collective impact model. She is also executive director of the Carbon Leadership Forum (a network of 25 regional hubs and thousands of practitioners) and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington.She has been a force behind collaborative initiatives such as the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator and the Structural Engineers 2050 Commitment. After practicing for years, Kate is an educator because she sees the role as ”part of my climate action responsibility.” Kate is thrilled to see all the different ways that embodied carbon is coming into policy -- from codes that call for low-carbon concrete to policy levers that address industrial decarbonization. Under Kate’s leadership, a consortium (CLF at UW, in partnership with Endeavour Center, University of Colorado-Boulder, and Building Transparency) is a finalist for the Lever for Change program with a project that proposes to convert buildings to carbon sinks by storing carbon in buildings using biogenic materials.

Michelle Moore is a social entrepreneur, former White House official, and current CEO of Groundswell, a nonprofit that builds community power by connecting clean energy with economic development, affordability, and quality of life.Reflecting on 25 years in the sustainability space, including a stint at the USGBC, Michelle notes that the focus on metrics and goals has fostered is a very technocratic culture. Yet her drive and purpose is centered on the idea that sustainability is fundamentally about loving people and place. Michelle believes in aligning value with values. This gives her a discerning perspective and inspires her commitment to ensuring that policy is oriented toward lasting change. Michelle has roots in rural Georgia and her work is anchored in her faith and the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Chandra Farley is the Just Energy Director at the Partnership for Southern Equity where she leads a team developing local and regional strategies to advance energy equity. “Activism is about trust, respect, and partnership,” she says, “This is personal work.” While some of the activity around utilities and how they are regulated can seem wonky, the influence is significant. PSE focuses on how equity-centered energy and utility policies can improve household economic stability and quality of air, water, and other resources that affect health and well-being. The organization’s theory of change is that people drive it. Chandra points out that this work “is all about strengthening civic engagement -- that’s a muscle. It’s through that that we can get to systems transformation.” 

Jasmin Moore serves as the Sustainability Director for Douglas County, Kansas, and the City of Lawrence, Kansas. This role encompasses everything from energy systems to food policy, and she recently led the integration of sustainability and equity into funding criteria for the Lawrence Capital Improvements Plan, a first in the state. Jasmin is pleased that, as she puts it, “equity has finally come to the sustainability party. Particularly in local government, sustainability and equity are closely tied.” We discussed the language of sustainability and the importance of working with communities to define terms locally. For the Douglas County and Lawrence community, she says, “we talk about sustainability as living today like you believe there will be a tomorrow -- the next day and the next generation. This is about quality of life for all.”

Renée Lertzman is a researcher, educator, and strategist who uses psychological insight to change our approach to the environmental crisis. She works with organizations to harness the creativity needed to solve big problems.  We spoke with Renée about her work, including Project Inside Out, which she created to help people in all sectors explore psychological concepts and expand changemaking potential. “In the built environment sector and others, the baseline is understanding that climate action and sustainability work is fundamentally change management,” she says. “It is also upsetting and charged. Recognizing these qualities of the work can help position us to understand all stakeholders as we try to advance change.” 

Kirsten Ritchie is a Global Resilience Leader and principal at Gensler, where she brings her civil engineering background to big discussions about innovation, wellbeing, and high-performance design. Being a trailblazer throughout her career has given Kirsten a confidence that’s crucial for the persuading that is part of that role. She points out that advancing sustainability in the AEC industry depends on collaboration. “I am really proud of the work we are doing,” she says. “We are making places better for people and better for the planet.” Gensler has recently committed to taking all projects to net zero carbon by 2030, and Kirsten is also proud of that step. “We have shifted the focus to carbon and climate, away from just efficiency,” she says. “I think we will see much faster movement in the coming five to ten years.” 

Daniele Horton is passionate about the role of real estate in tackling climate change. Trained as an architect, she is an influential sustainability leader; her company, Verdani Partners, manages sustainability for portfolios totaling more than 720 million square feet. Daniele grew up in Brazil with an appreciation for the natural world. In the work world, she shifted from architecture to real estate because she saw the possibility to scale sustainability solutions. She is committed to reaching net zero, for new and existing buildings, and warns that commercial real estate firms that do not move toward this will not be ready for the risks ahead. The time for incremental improvements is behind us, she says, “now is the time for for bold, aggressive action.” 

Architect and educator Wanda Dalla Costa is a member of the Saddle Lake First Nation, the Principal of Tawaw Architecture Collective, and a Professor at Arizona State University, where she is also Director/Founder of the Indigenous Design Collaborative. Her approach to architecture is rooted in her perspective on how communities support people and their cultural lifeways. “We integrate a full indigenous research paradigm in our work. We explore place and purpose through epistemology, or ways of knowing; ontology, or ways of being; methodology, or ways of doing; and axiology, which is about value systems.” Wanda notes that architecture -- practice and education -- may be on the cusp of significant changes. “We need to build multiple knowledges into our work … to create create an Earth-centered architecture.” 

Jennifer Leitsch is VP of Corporate Responsibility at CBRE, the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm. Jennifer has an engineering degree and became captivated by the notion of business as a force for good. Under her leadership, CBRE recently announced a new set of emissions reduction goals with science based targets. “As the largest commercial real estate firm, we are committed to leading on this front,” Jennifer says. CBRE is also thinking about risk, including transition risks that will be significant to companies in the coming years. “The industry is in the midst of major mindset shift,” she says. 

Architect Michelle Amt is Director of Sustainability at VMDO Architects and previously worked at William McDonough + Partners. She is serving on the jury for the AIA COTE Top Ten Awards in 2021, and cites that program with merging design with high performance in a way that no other does. Michelle says she feels like she’s part of a movement within an industry. The industry is baseline, championing things that we should all be doing whereas the movement is trying to make a much bigger change. “Let’s not lose the sense that the world can be reinvented,” she says. “When COVID-19 hit, it made us all think about what we really needed, what was meaningful, and how things could change. There has been suffering, too, but we did shift quickly. The planet mobilized for a solution. That could work for climate, too.”