Design the Future

Lauren Alger is vice president and national director of sustainable design at STV, a multinational company focused on the design, engineering, and planning of infrastructure at all scales. Lauren, a civil engineer by training, is dedicated to transforming how infrastructure is designed, built, and measured, so it becomes a driver of climate solutions for our communities. She leads ASCE Infrastructure 2050, an industry-wide initiative to reduce embodied carbon emissions of infrastructure assets. She has been a leader with the New York Embodied Carbon Working Group (an AIA New York State effort) focused on actionable recommendations for reducing embodied carbon across the built environment. The group is issuing a key report this month. “It has been incredible to see this group evolve,” Lauren says. “It has shown me how much is possible when we make a choice to collectively show up. We all had the same belief: that we could, together, shape better outcomes for future generations.”

At Living Future 26 in Seattle, Lindsay Baker’s address was interrupted by a fire alarm. It was a false alarm, but it also persisted for a while, so the entire community got to witness Lindsay’s humor and grace as she continued her remarks. We decided to share them here. Lindsay re-recorded the talk for us without the aggressive interruption (such an on-the-nose metaphor for our times that it seemed surreal). Every year on this stage, Lindsay brings wisdom about the movement building that is under way. This year’s message is especially crucial. She talks about the signals in the world, what people in power do when they feel threatened, and what we can do right now to stay together, stay focused, and scale our progress.

For developer Jill Sherman, buildings are not just assets, they are support systems for a thriving future. Jill leads Edlen & Co.’s public-private partnerships and build-to-suit projects. Jill sources new deals and manages all aspects of the development process, with a depth of expertise at integrating non-conventional sources of financing including low income housing tax credits, new market tax credits, historic tax credits, tax-exempt bonds and urban renewal funds. “We are focused on developing work that is community focused, impacts underserved communities, and pushes the boundaries of sustainability to try to bring that to scale,” she says. One such project, the PAE Living Building , was “the world’s first developer-led Living Building” and the approach (it was a conventional capital stack model) will be studied for some time. Jill shared about her path to becoming a developer, which germinated in noticing needs in the community and a desire to do positive things. The key attributes for development work, she says, are deep curiosity, comfort with math, and a high tolerance for unexpected challenges. We were at the Living Future conference, surrounded by the community, so our question about “being part of the movement” resonated. “When I'm able to meet with like-minded developers and architects and contractors and engineers,” she says, “I do feel like we are all trying to, yes, move our industry forward, but more importantly, create some positive change in the world.”

Beth Heider is a thought leader at the intersection of high-performance buildings and sustainable design, global business strategy, and organizational leadership. As founder & CEO of Heider Sustainability Advisors, Beth supports businesses, organizations, and start-ups create more resilient, healthy, and just-plain-better solutions for the built environment. She led at Skanska USA for nearly two decades, including a six-year stint as the company’s Chief Sustainability Officer. Beth has been at the forefront of the green building movement since its early days in the mid-90s. A Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, LEED Fellow, and Living Building Hero, she has served on multiple organizations, notably as the Board Chair for the U.S. Green Building Council and Living Future. We talked with Beth about how she got interested in architecture, how she came to work in construction, and what it takes to “keep tough pups on the porch.”

Miranda Gardiner is Executive Director of the iMasons Climate Accord (iCA), a non-profit trade association focused on decarbonization of digital infrastructure. She has an architecture background and has worked in a range of organizations -- design firms, associations, and tech companies -- giving her a special perspective. She sees herself as part of multiple industries and communities. Her leadership is marked by commitment to fostering collaboration and facilitating progress, highlighted by successful partnerships with Open Compute Project and RICS Tech Partner Programme, frameworks like the iCA’s Maturity Model, and volunteer engagements. In 2025, Miranda was recognized in Data Centre Magazine’s “Top 100 Women in Data Centers” and Capacity Media’s Most Influential People. We asked her about what advice she has for young professionals, especially as someone who has navigated into a field at the vanguard. She quoted the late Dr. Paul Farmer, who summarized his approach to intense, worldwide healthcare work as “doing hard things with friends.” Miranda says, “That’s it. We get up knowing that it is a challenge every single day. The advice I give is to remain consistent -- keep learning and asking questions and sharing and telling the stories.” Miranda shared some of the challenges in the digital infrastructure realm right now, and mentioned some data center work that she is watching with interest right now, including urban sites in existing buildings and with aggressive water and ecology strategies. “One issue that we’re looking at right now is water and the water-energy nexus,” Miranda says. “I am excited about the potential of this focus and how it relates to how these buildings are designed and how they relate to their communities.”

Architect Lara Kaufman is a Design Principal based in Studio Gang’s New York office. As the firm's Sustainability Lead, she directs teams on implementation of holistic design approaches for decarbonization, water conservation, site ecologies, and healthy materials. An advocate for urgent climate action within the building industry, Lara is currently co-lead for the Carbon Leadership Forum’s NYC hub and engaged with other working groups promoting environmental policy, best practices, and education. Touching on reuse, Lara talked about “the alchemy of taking something that nobody cares about and turning it into something incredible that is transformed through adding on to it or collaging it with something else.” She shared about how she and Studio Gang teams get from big topics to benefits to people: “Often, we think about decarbonization, wellness, and biodiversity as these large priorities. But what’s powerful about the design process is that it makes sustainability tangible. We’re talking about real benefits that you can see and feel at the human and community level. If you integrate sustainability into the design concept, you'll have a better chance at implementing it and realizing it.”

Anjanette Green has more than two decades of architecture, design, and material research experience. She launched A Greener Space in 2016, the same year she ventured into the Peruvian Amazon to lead a team in a zero waste project. An advocate for alternative building solutions, she has travelled the world promoting research for bio-based materials. Address-independent, Anjanette can be found in remote areas of the world building with bio-based materials and learning from local communities. We talked about all the things: bio-based materials … indoor air quality … the importance of certifications … the big moves forward … and the big gaps that remain. When we talked about might guide others and Anjanette mused about how we learn about our industry and how we show up in our movement: “Nothing can replace the in-real-life experience,” she said. “And for me, that is incredibly important to show support, especially for the manufacturers that I want to prop up, but also for the job sites that need a helping hand. I'm the one who shows up with a backpack to a job site and says, “Where’s the hammer? Where is the earthbag?” I think that that’s the best way that a person can learn, and then I can be enough of an authority on a subject that I can then share that with other people.”

For our latest episode, we spoke with Kristy Walson and Sarah Gudeman of BranchPattern. It was a fun moment to catch them, right after Greenbuild, and we talked about their careers and also how partnerships and friends are important in this work. Kristy is a mechanical engineer and she is a Principal and Building Science Practice Lead at BranchPattern. Based in Orlando, Florida, Kristy is dedicated to advancing sustainable design and decarbonization and collaborates to deliver building science services that propel the industry. Sarah is a Principal and Engineering Practice Lead at BranchPattern; she is based in Omaha, Nebraska. She integrates engineering and building science to create practical, scalable solutions that improve building performance, reduce carbon, and enhance health and comfort. This was a wide-ranging conversation that included their youth experiences and their thoughts about the power of collaboration, their work at BranchPattern, and the imperatives that the movement and industry are facing in 2025. “We have an obligation to do better once we know better,” Sarah says. “As designers and engineers, we have a lot of power to shift the norms -- what is high performance, what is human centered, what is low carbon -- and really help elevate that baseline, instead of treating those things as an upgrade. Kristy says she is empowered by the community. “I wouldn't be here doing this work if I didn't have that North Star of feeling like I'm part of a movement,” she says. “Sustainability is, in some ways, a technical craft, but being part of the movement has enabled me to advocate for equity, policy, systemic change, and for breaking and remaking the systems that don't work for all of us.”

Julie Ju-Youn Kim, FAIA, is the William H. Harrison Professor and Chair of the School of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she founded and directs the Flourishing Communities Collaborative, an interdisciplinary research and design lab. She is also founder and partner of C2 Architecture Studio. In her early-career years in Detroit, Julie tried to meet as many people as possible and found that opportunities -- for practice and teaching -- presented themselves. Julie’s current graduate studio, which is also a Flourishing Communities Collaborative effort, is related to her vision for the school -- melding practice, research, education, and technology into a common conversation rooted in relationships. Navigating the moment from where she sits, Julie says that she “thinks about the capacity of architects and designers as agents of change for the better and stays focused on the students and their futures as empathetic, compassionate leaders for the future. They ground me!” In addition to her teaching and practice work, Julie is working on a new book (anticipated from Routledge in 2027): Intervening in the Urban Palimpsest: Design, Equity, and Community Agency. “This exploration is about understanding cities as dynamic palimpsests: they are shaped by meaning, memory, history, and by transformation,” she says. “This is our context.”

Gladys Ly-Au Young is a founding partner of the Seattle firm, Side x Side Architects. The firm is changing practice by broadening the spectrum of architectural services, to promote community focused design that supports equity and sustainability in the built environment. Gladys was honored this year with the Hero Award from Living Future, which recognizes people who are advancing progress toward a living future for all. Gladys described what it’s like to work at the intersection of architecture, sustainability, and social justice. “It is important for build a community of care,” she says. “We have to focus on transformational changes. And I think we have to shift our thinking from ‘what is the impact?’ to ‘who is impacted the most?’” She talked about agency: “Building resiliency for me has everything to do with finding belonging and a sense of connection. That helps me make the changes I need to see.” She is also thinking a lot about regeneration, which she says “depends on our collective capacity to improve the ecosystem for a thriving future for all. All means everyone and everything.”

Barbra is the founder and CEO of BuildingEase and Sustainable Performance Institute -- an industry leader whose innovative vision drives market transformation from public policy to professional practice. Her work focuses on the intersection of systems, processes and culture. With a diverse background of fine arts, social psychology and nearly 30 years in architecture and sustainability consulting, she brings a perspective that engages the human dynamics of decision-making and creative collaboration to technical work. Barbra has always been most interested in the how. Her advice for those who want to be effective working on sustainability in the built environment is to “develop enabling skills.” Because, she says, “Technical knowledge is necessary but insufficient. Any work in sustainability requires systems thinking, understanding of change dynamics and change management, communication, facilitation skills, and negotiation skills.”

Erica McBride is the Regenerative Operations Manager at Architectural Nexus -- known as Arch Nexus. She oversees the performance and integrity of the firm’s two certified Living Buildings, in Sacramento and Salt Lake City. Erica was honored with the Living Future Hero Award in 2025 and holds credentials as a WELL AP, LEED Green Associate, and Living Future Accredited professional. Her work reflects a deep passion for regenerative design and sustainable building operations. Erica is living these buildings -- experiencing and nurturing them in a hands-on way. She shared some great stories with us about what that means (including days that require a squeegee on the roof in the rain or even a swim in a cistern!). She has inspiring advice about how the living building challenge is, as she puts it “so attainable! You really just have to, to think about the building as an ecosystem. Then ask: ‘How do all of these pieces within the building ecosystem fit together?’ Once you understand how your building likes to be operated, it’s easy.” She also has thoughts about what could make it even better: She’d love to see the operations people at the table at the outset of the project design and planning. She believes that operations people have a lot of practical experience that could be leveraged as design decisions are made.

Jenn Taranto has more than 25 years of experience in commercial real estate and construction and serves as Vice President of Sustainability at STO Building Group, a major construction organization. Passionate about reducing environmental impact, she drives STOBG’s internal sustainability strategy, helps clients define CSR goals, guides project teams to achieve milestones, and supports efforts to lower costs and emissions. We talked with Jenn about her long-term role with Built Environment Plus, the New England-based regional green building nonprofit, and how such groups are supporting market and industry transformation. Jenn suggests that people working on sustainability in the construction sector should be “deeply curious, have loads of tenacity, and be interested in breaking systems to build better ones.” She was instrumental in getting the Contractors’ Commitment off the ground and shared its reason for being. “We saw a real need for a system to encourage companies to track progress and engage in this transformation, she says. As for how we’re progressing -- the movement, the industry, and society overall -- we asked Jenn if we’re where she thought we’d be by now. “Not exactly,” she said. “Where’s my hoverboard?”

Stacy Glass is co-founder and executive director of ChemFORWARD, a nonprofit that creates access to chemical hazard data and seeks safer alternatives in partnership with industry. Stacy drives partnerships, collaborations and stakeholder engagement to support this mission and her aim to end toxic chemical exposure and advance human and environmental equity. ChemForward’s theory of change is rooted in collaboration with industry and other parties -- the entire supply chain. What ChemFoward is really working toward, Stacy says, is “a world where all chemicals are vetted before use.” This would be a fundamental change. “We’d like to see no more hazardous chemicals entering circulation and existing hazardous chemicals being drawn down and replaced with safer alternatives.” She points out that chemical pollution is a significant threat. In planetary boundaries conversations, “novel entities” are in the high risk zone. Stacy notes that people -- consumers of personal products and building products and more -- need to be smart about how to ask for products that are as good as they can be. “We encourage buyers in all parts of the supply chain to be thoughtful about what they are asking for -- and not just ask for things that are ‘free of’ one thing. This can lead to what we call ‘regrettable alternatives.' Instead, as the entire supply chain knows more and understands developing metrics to measure progress in safer chemistry, we can all work toward better, safer, and healthier.”

Kaarin Knudson is an architect, a writer, and an educator with more than 25 years’ experience in design, sustainability, and community building. Trained as a journalist before becoming an architect, her work has always focused on people and place. In 2017, after a decade in architectural practice, she organized the public-interest project Better Housing Together to address Lane County’s housing crisis. This work supported the creation of Eugene’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, Lane County’s first Affordable Housing Action Plan, and Oregon’s landmark middle housing reforms. In 2024, she was elected as Mayor of Eugene, Oregon, with 73% of the primary vote and 96% in the general election. Kaarin teaches planning and urban design at the University of Oregon, and she speaks at regional and national conferences about sustainable cities, housing, and the work of guiding community change. She is co-author, with Nico Larco, of The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook (2024). We discussed what this moment is calling us all to do. “I think we are building new muscles and new relationships and new patterns of behavior with one another,” she said. “This is challenging us to think about how to work in different ways and how to stay focused on the future that we want to build. The framing of the problem is going to determine the solutions. We have to be the people who are framing the problem in a way that allows the solutions to be more connected, more productive, more about advancing into this future together.”

Kayleigh Houde is an Associate Principal and Global Computational Projects Lead at Buro Happold, where she is responsible for the harmonized development of new technologies within the open-source coding platform BHoM. Her leadership extends to chairing the MEP 2040 Commitment, participating in the ECHO Project and ASHRAE Center of Excellence for Building Decarbonization. She is also a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches Parametric Life Cycle Assessment. We spoke with Kayleigh soon after the MEP 2040 and Carbon Leadership Forum had released The Beginner’s Guide to MEP Embodied Carbon, a critical resource that was eagerly awaited in the community. Naturally, we spoke with her about that effort and about the broader question of why embodied carbon is important for MEP practitioners. “We have coalesced a lot of data to to bridge gaps for the MEP disciplines and provide clarity about the MEP impact,” she says. Kayleigh’s technical leadership is paralleled by her deep commitment to collaboration across disciplines, evidenced in many ways, including her work on the ECHO effort to harmonize data across disciplines and certification programs. “Computers aren’t the thing,” Kayleigh says of the potential of computation in climate work and the built environment. “They are the thing that gets you to the thing. Really, what computations helps you to solve are some of issues that we have in human collaboration. Sometimes we think we’re connecting but we are not really speaking the same language. Getting people to talk and collaborate is a big part of the solution in the computational work.”

As the Head of Sustainability for Henning Larsen, Kritika Kharbanda spearheads the global sustainability team’s initiatives, goals, and growth. She serves on the ULI New York’s Climate and Sustainability Council and is the co-chair for AIA New York’s Building Science Committee. We talked about her journey from India to Japan, Denmark, and the U.S. We discussed storytelling and negotiations; evidence-based design; and her role with Pathways AI,a climate-tech startup using AI to automate Environmental Product Declarations; and her Substack . We also asked her about whether she feels like she’s a part of an industry or a movement (a question that feels more important now than it has since we began asking it in our first episodes in early 2020). “If I were just part of an industry,” she says, “I’d probably be doing my nine to six, designing buildings, and calling it a day. But in my head and heart, I feel called to join with others in learning and collaboration and advocacy. We are building relationships and working together toward tangible outcomes. This is a movement. I am part of it, and I think everyone should be a part of it, because just being part of the industry is not enough anymore.”

As VP of Building Resilient Futures at Enterprise Community Partners, Krista Egger stewards the nonprofit’s national environmental programs, including Green Communities, Health Action Plan, Resilience Academies, and Decarbonization Hubs. Krista went to Oberlin and and studied physics and architectural history. After college, a stint with AmeriCorps introduced her to a kind of applied building science. “I had the opportunity to identify root causes and then make things better,” she says. Sometimes making things better means dismantling long-held beliefs. “For too long,” she says, “there has been a perceived predicament of whether people can build affordable housing or green housing, whether there can be a standard way to operate buildings or green ways of operating buildings. Those are false choices.” The programs that Egger leads are leveraging capital and policy and resources to solve for barriers that prevent all housing from being affordable, healthy, and resilient. “We are centering the needs of people who live in housing to make decisions about housing.” related links: Health Action Plan framework Green Communities Criteria

Dr. Upali Nanda is Partner and Executive Vice President at HKS. As the firm’s Global Sector Director, Innovation, she oversees HKS’s Research, Advisory, Sustainable Design and Cities & Communities services. Based in Ann Arbor, Upali has extensive experience leading research projects in design practice with a focus on the impact of design on human health and perception. Upali believes that the big problems will be solved by getting many disciplines together in conversation. One example, the FDA Home as a Health Hub Idea Lab, brought together housing designers, developers, technology developers, investors, healthcare providers, and others. All such work is rooted in Upali’s deep commitment to the integration of research into practice. That commitment has prompted to her to ask deep questions about people and place. “How can we design for humans without knowing how humans are designed?” she asks. “That question got me interested in how humans perceive and behave, and then over time, that evolved into this interest in human health itself.”

Shannon Goodman is the Executive Director of the Lifecycle Building Center in Atlanta, which has redirected nearly 13 million pounds of usable materials away from landfills and generated over $6 million in community savings, including 450 in-kind material grants to nonprofits. Shannon also serves as Board President for the nonprofit Build Reuse, representing reuse-focused organizations across the U.S. We talked to her about running a nonprofit and about the changes afoot in the AEC field. “We are in the midst of a massive mind shift,” she says. “It's only going to work if people actually see that there is value. We have to stop thinking about these materials as waste. They are resources.” Shannon’s vision for the reuse work is that “the entire process of what we do gets really sexy for people,” she says. “I look forward to a time when people are compelled by the stories they are hearing of what has been saved and reused. They will think, ‘I want a piece of that for my work.’ That is only going to happen if we make it really easy to tell those stories.”