Design the Future

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.” 

Dr. Whitney Austin Gray is Senior VP of Research at the International Well Building Institute and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown School of Urban and Regional Planning and the School of Nursing and Health Studies. Whitney was captivated early on in her studies by the notion that buildings can promote health, productivity, and wellness, which inspired her to create a career path that combines public health and design. This cross pollination is more important than ever right now, when we can see so clearly how buildings and climate change are impacting health. 

Lynn Simon is head of Real Estate and Workplace Services Sustainability at Google, a role that includes health, wellness, food, transportation, placemaking, amenities, and more. The built environment is central to her work, but it also includes all the systems that connect people to place. Recently, Lynn convened the Regen Lab to address what they called “radical resilience beyond the perimeter.” Lynn points out that “think global, act local” is still true, and for Google, which is in 54 countries and 648 buildings, that means considering equity in many places and in many ways. There is so much to learn, she says, by engaging the disenfranchised and indigenous communities.”I think we have to be intentional about all aspects of our lives and our work to bring in diverse voices.”

Adrienne Johnson is a mechanical engineer with Point Energy Innovations, where she focuses on helping clients realize high performance buildings, including net zero projects. Her interest in sustainability is broad; she has researched water and energy issues and won the USGBC’s Malcom Lewis IMPACT! award in 2017 for her work on a school in Parkwood, outside of Capetown. That experience has informed how she brings social justice to her work today, including working on what the industry looks like and also who is benefitting from sustainable infrastructure. She hopes to see net zero energy buildings gain momentum and buildings become part of an overall just energy transition. 

Architect Anica Landreneau leads HOK’s global sustainable design practice and serves on the firm’s board of directors and design board. Anica has been involved at the local and Federal level with policy and advocacy, including providing Congressional testimony. As Anica says, “We need those who are doing the work to come to these hearings and bring our experience and expertise to the table. Code changes, and other changes, are needed. Who do we think will do this?” In those words, Anica articulates a question that is, perhaps, lurking for many active in this realm. “If not us, then who?”