Board of Advisors

Ann Edminster – Principal, Design AVEnues

Ann Edminster, M.Arch., is an environmental design consultant whose work focuses on investigation of building materials and systems. As a member and past co-chair of the USGBC’s LEED Homes Committee, she is one of the principal authors of LEED for Homes. She also consults to the LEED for Homes pilot team in California, is a past member of the LEED Steering Committee, and member and past co-chair of the USGBC’s Materials and Resources Technical Advisory Group. She consults to builders, owners, developers, and other design firms. She is co-author of Efficient Wood Use In Residential Construction: A Practical Guide to Saving Wood, Money, and Forests, author of numerous technical papers and articles, and has been an invited speaker at dozens of regional, national, and international green building conferences over the past dozen years. She has both a bachelor's and a master's degree in architecture and has designed more than 100 home remodels. Her own home remodel won a green building award in January 2007.

Click here for Ann Edminster Discussing Green Building

TJ Glauthier – Former Deputy Secretary, US Department of Energy

T.J. Glauthier is an advisor to companies in the energy and “cleantech” sector, including venture capital firms and their start-up companies, private equity firms, alternative energy companies, electric utilities, and global energy and transportation companies. He advises financial firms and start-up companies through his firm, TJG Energy Associates, LLC. He consults to large corporations through association with Booz Allen Hamilton's global energy practice. He serves on the Boards of Directors of Union Drilling, Inc., and EnerNOC, Inc. His pro bono activities include serving as an advisor to Stanford University's Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency and on the Board of Directors of the San Mateo County Resource Conservation District.

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David Gottfried – Managing Director of Regenerative Ventures

Gottfried is the CEO of WorldBuild Consulting, a subsidiary of Regenerative Ventures. Since 1994, WorldBuild has advised many of the U.S.’s leading green building organizations and their projects across the many sectors of the built environment. The entity provides strategic green management consulting services, treating each client as an exclusive “partner” and one of its portfolio companies. Its specialty is the greening of companies, products and real estate portfolios – through invention of creative programs and initiatives. The company has worked with hundreds of leading organizations that strive to lessen their reliance on limited natural resources and wasteful practices, while boosting lifecycle based economics and quality of life.

Gregory Kats – Managing Director, Good Energies

Greg Kats currently serves as Managing Director of Good Energies, a leading investor in solar energy, wind energy, load management and green buildings. He is a Senior Advisor to Cherokee Investment Partners, the country’s largest private brownfields development fund (with over $5 billion in projected green developments) and serves on Cherokee’s Sustainability Board. He is the lead advisor to the cast and ductile iron industries in guiding greening and green branding of their building products. He has been the Principal Advisor in developing $1 billion of green low income housing, involving Enterprise Community Partnership, JPMorgan Chase, Fannie Mae, American Institute of Architects, etc.

Bruce King – Founder and Director of the Ecological Building Network (EBNet)

The Ecological Building Network (EBNet) is a non-profit information resource based in San Rafael (www.ecobuildnetwork.org). EBNet, with its many colleagues, has: organized an international conference on ecological building in 2001, with attendees from 15 countries; conducted hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of research into alternative building systems, most recently conducting a much-needed fire test of straw bale walls that has opened the gates for that promising system of building to become much more common and mainstream; helped write improved building codes from California to Mongolia that have facilitated more ecologically-sound methods of building previously hampered by the codes. In affiliation with Rocky Mountain Institute, Biomimicry Institute, Environmental Building News, and others, EBNet is hosting the Building After Oil Forum to indentify a new palette of construction materials for a post-carbon world, slated for early 2010.

Bruce King is a registered Civil Engineer with a private structural consulting practice in San Rafael, California, and 25 years of experience in green building.

Mort Miller – Co-Founder of the GeMROI Co., Retired

In April of 1984, Hunter Morin and Mort Miller founded The GeMROI Company, a sales and marketing firm based in Fredericksburg, Virginia. They created an organization, which provides marketing, merchandising, and sales for a number of major millwork and building materials manufacturers in the United States. The companies, which GeMROI now represents, have total revenues in excess of $6 billion. Mort Miller, GeMROI’s vice president and treasurer, spent 16 years with General Products in sales and marketing and was vice president of sales and marketing.

Robert Rugg - Executive Director, The Drake Group

The Drake Group is an association of leading building material dealers with over 300 locations across the U.S. (gypsum, steel framing, ceilings, and insulation) primarily serving the new commercial and residential segments. Prior, Mr. Rugg was President of James Hardie Gypsum and has 19 years of experience in working with USG in various marketing, strategic planning, and general management roles. He holds a BS in Finance from the University of Illinois and an MBA from St. Mary's College of California.

Andrew L. Shapiro – Founder and CEO, Green Order

Andrew's diverse background as a consultant, journalist, lecturer, and attorney enables him to provide the interdisciplinary leadership that today's complex sustainability challenges require. Since founding GreenOrder in 2000, Andrew has developed the firm into a trusted advisor to some of the largest enterprises in the world. He is perhaps best known for working closely with General Electric's senior management on the creation and implementation of its award-winning, multi-billion dollar "ecomagination" initiative. Other GreenOrder clients have included Allianz, BP, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Duke University, DuPont, General Motors, Morgan Stanley, Office Depot, Pfizer, Pitney Bowes, Silverstein Properties (WTC redevelopment), Starwood Capital, Tishman Speyer, Vornado Realty, and Warner Bros. Studios.

John F. Straube – Ph.D, M.A.Sc., B.A.Sc (Eng) P.Eng

John Straube is a Canadian engineer and building scientist. He holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor in both the Department of Civil Engineering and the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo where he teaches courses in structural design, material science, and building science to both disciplines. At the university, John is also the director of the Building Engineering Group. He has been deeply involved in the areas of building performance as a consultant, researcher, and educator. His research and practice have focused on the design of energy-efficient, healthy and durable buildings, and the development of new building systems and products. His work is supported by advanced computer simulation and full-scale, natural-exposure performance monitoring. John is a founding principal of Building Science Consulting , a frequent contributor to buildingscience.com.

Ted Van Der Linden - Director of Sustainability, DPR Construction

Leading DPR’s national green building services, Ted van der Linden, Director of Sustainable Construction and a Senior Preconstruction Manager, offers a tremendous wealth of expertise in all phases of commercial, industrial and sustainable construction. With more than 22 years of experience, van der Linden serves on the national Board of Directors for the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and is an active leader of the USGBC’s Northern California Chapter Board of Directors. With the highest percent of LEED?-accredited professionals on staff among than any other general contractor in the nation (201 and counting to date), DPR specializes in technically challenging and sustainable projects across the country, including its own Sacramento office building that achieved Silver certification for new construction and gold certification for commercial interiors. The first privately owned LEED?-certified building in California’s Central Valley, the 52,300-sq.-ft. building will reduce water use by more than 45 percent, saving more than 267,000 gallons of potable water per year. DPR also anticipates that the additional $85,112 outlay, including architect and engineer design fees, on the $6.2 million facility will generate more than $450,000 in overall energy, water and maintenance savings over a ten year period.

Click here for Ted van der Linden Discussing Green Building

Rob Watson – Chairman, CEO & Chief Scientist, EcoTech International Group

Under Rob's direction as the "Founding Father of LEED" and as its national Steering Committee Chairman between 1994 and 2005, LEED became the most widespread and fastest-growing standard by which green buildings are measured worldwide. A pioneer of the modern green building movement for over twenty years, in 2007 Rob Watson founded ECOTECH International and its subsidiaries, American SINOTECH and American INDOTECH to meet the fast-growing demand for green building technologies and services in China, India and the U.S.

As the Director of International Energy and Green Buildings Programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Mr. Watson worked in China on green building programs and market development from 1997 to 2006. He is a green building adviser to the municipalities of Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai Shenzhen and Shenyang and has assisted the Chinese government to develop energy-saving standards for commercial buildings and residential buildings that reduce energy consumption by 50%. The recipient of several national and international awards for green buildings, in 2004, China's Ministry of Construction (MOC) recognized Rob with one of its first “Green Innovation” awards--the only foreign expert so honored--for his work on green buildings in China.

Phillip Williams, PE, and LEED AP - Webcor's Vice President of Technical Systems and Sustainability

Phil Williams' career focus has been in the California marketplace with extensive experience in the design, application, installation and service of HVAC, plumbing, electrical, fire protection, data, control, security and related technical systems. He serves as the Chairman of the San Francisco Mayor's Task Force on Green Buildings which developed recommendations for private sector green building requirements. These aggressive standards; adopted and implemented in 2008, cover virtually all private sector commercial and residential building types with phased escalations to enable industry implementation. In addition he serves on the Advisory for the Business Council on Climate Change (BC3), the San Francisco Building Code Advisory Committee (including Code Advisory Green Building Subcommittee), Chair of the Industry Advisory Board for the Center for the Built Environment (CBE) through UC Berkeley and serves on several Cleantech/Greentech advisory boards.

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