Design the Future

In our kick-off episode, meet hosts Lindsay Baker and Kira Gould, who discuss their interest in exploring and sharing the amazing work being done in sustainability by women across the country and beyond. Lindsay and Kira have worked in a number of capacities in the sustainable design field: Lindsay worked at USGBC, Google, and WeWork, in between which she started and ran Comfy. Kira was an editor at Metropolis magazine, worked at architecture firms, and now runs a communications consult...

Our first guest, Sara Neff, Senior Vice President for Sustainability for Kilroy Realty, has brought that organization to a leadership position in sustainability within the real estate market. She talks about her career journey, advances being made in the real estate sector, why the business case matters (and isn’t everything), and what commitments to carbon neutrality mean in her sector. We discuss what’s ahead, including work in supply chains and efforts to quantify climate risk. She also te...

Rosa Sheng is an architect and Principal with SmithGroup and the firm’s Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. We discuss how intersectionality plays out in architecture, pushing us to eliminate conventional silos and explore how sustainability, justice, diversity, equity and inclusion are interrelated. We talk about the diversity and gender pay equity issues behind the American Institute of Architecture’s Equity by Design initiative, founded at AIA San Francisco, and how that group’s...

Sarah Golden is the Senior Energy Analyst and Conference Chair, VERGE Energy with GreenBiz Group. We talk about the importance of storytelling and how stories can advance the movement. Sarah also shares her perspective on energy markets in the context of the pandemic and economic disruption, including insight about the fight for the shape of what will come next. We discuss feminine leadership traits -- crucial for handling the pandemic and climate change.

Mary Curtiss is the head of sustainability for HP operations, which includes 120 sites around the world. For her, this is a mandate about buildings and people. She explains why storytelling and empathy are as important as the technical side of buildings. She describes how she sees sustainability as something that engages everyone who enters a building, and how she thinks about that experience along with efficiency, renewables, and other specific sustainability factors. She also shares thought...