As I begin my new role as president and CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI), I am grateful for the opportunity to serve such a dynamic organization. Since joining the USGBC team more than seven years ago, I have been invigorated by the spirit and strength of our work.
USGBC and GBCI are the innovators of the LEED Standard (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), which has become universally accepted marker for efficient, safe and healthy buildings. Today, nearly 75,000 commercial projects participate in LEED across the globe with 1.85 million square feet of building space becoming LEED-certified every day.
By combining USGBC’s collective, community-wide creativity and spirit of innovation and our wide range of resources, we provide best-in-class products, services and programs to the global green building industry with the goal of furthering sustainable building practices.
This requires a digital USGBC. We will continue to develop platforms and technologies that will disrupt the market and offer superior convenience, insight and benchmarking to our customers. We are dedicated to establishing ourselves as the No. 1 leader of market transformation and customer experience.
USGBC is already recognized globally for market transformation. GBCI is considered the leader of speed to market transformation. Together, they are creating unstoppable momentum in the green building marketplace, covering nearly every sector of the sustainability industry. USGBC and GBCI will redefine performance and offer real tools to benchmark, measure and manage return on investment.
We are committed to developing the full potential of the diverse, committed and passionate people who power our movement. Only by aspiring to, and ultimately achieving, organizational excellence and optimum efficiency across our movement will we be able to solve the challenges of tomorrow and realize the vision and mission of USGBC within a generation.
Understanding the ins and outs of the LEED rating system and its consensus-based development process is essential to helping the green building industry adapt to and understand the direct impacts that better buildings have on society as a whole.
For exactly this reason, USGBC has established key partnerships - our mantra is “partnership is the new leadership.” We live and breathe this every day and will continue to partner with industry stakeholders to push for new and better ways to design, construct, maintain, operate and occupy our buildings and communities.
USGBC strives to help building owners and community leaders improve their building and community performance, whether through saving more water and energy or enhancing the human experience by making occupants more comfortable. Sustainability is not possible without human health and wellness considerations, and USGBC will drive forward a vision of human health in all aspects of the built environment.
I look forward to further modernizing and enhancing our capabilities while striving every day to bring more people into our global movement, to widen our sphere of influence and to innovate beyond our wildest dreams. Now is the time to show leadership by bringing people together and by focusing on what unites us, rather than what divides us.