WISE: Women in Sustainability and Energy Session Two:
Sticks and Bricks
The challenges and triumphs of constructing green buildings March 13, 2015— 8:30 to 10:00 am
Moderator:
Fiona Cousins, Principal at Arup Speakers:
Sarah Beatty, Founder and President at Green Depot Gina Bocra, Chief Sustainability Officer at NYC DOB
Amanda Kaminsky, Sustainable Construction Manager at The Durst Organization
31 Chambers Street, Suite 609 New York, NY 10007
www.be-exchange.org t.212.349.3900
WISE session two:
speaker bios
Speaker Bios:
Fiona Cousins, PE, LEED AP BD+C
Principal ARUP
Fiona Cousins has extensive project experience. She has worked for both corporate and institutional clients on a wide variety of building, planning and sustainability projects including museums,
galleries, archives, trading floors, laboratories, libraries, performing art centers, and campuses. Fiona leads the sustainability team in the New York office of Arup, is one of the leaders of the mechanical engineering team, directs technical investments for Arup’s Americas Region, and is a member of the Arup Americas Board.
She has a background as a mechanical engineer and has spent much of her career engaged in HVAC design, with an area of specialization in thermal comfort and energy efficiency. She developed a strong interest in sustainability during the 1990s and has been working since then to incorporate sustainability into her projects. The other major strand of her professional career has been interdisciplinary design and integration and she is most interested in complex projects where collaboration between disciplines can achieve break-through results.
She has been a LEED® Accredited Professional since 2001, and has served as both Manager and Director for a number of projects that are pursuing the highest levels of LEED goals. She also served for two years as the chair of the New York Chapter of the USGBC (Urban Green). She is currently the chair-elect of the USGBC.
A frequent presenter on transformative sustainable building design, she has presented technical papers in the areas of low energy design and sustainability.
Sarah Beatty
Founder and President Green Depot
Sarah Beatty is an accidental entrepreneur. After experiencing an environmental health scare in her own home, she founded Green Depot with the mission: to make green building materials accessible affordable and gratifying. Since its inception in 2005, Green Depot’s vision of being the one-stop-shop for sustainable building materials has grown to include e-commerce and 10 showrooms across the US, from New York to Seattle.
The company has been the supplier of a myriad of projects, including Harvard University, the city of Chicago, the Capitol Building in Washington D.C, and corporations including Starbucks, Microsoft, and Goldman Saks. Green Depot’s New York City LEED platinum flagship store was characterized as “sustainability in action” by the office of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Green Depot is a 2010 recipient of the EPA Environmental Quality Award. The New York Times says: “The Green Depot brings eco-consciousness down to earth, where it belongs” (2009). Sarah is on the advisory board of the Green Schools Alliance, is an active member of the GC3: Green Chemistry & Commerce council, and the American Sustainable Business Council. She is a LEED accredited professional, and a certified MWBE. Prior to founding Green Depot, Sarah worked for 16 years in media, as Vice President of Marketing at MTV: Music Television, and Senior Vice President of Marketing for USA Network.
Gina Bocra, RA, LEED AP BD+C/ID+C
Chief Sustainability Officer
New York City Department of Buildings
Gina Bocra, RA, LEED AP BD+C/ID+C, is Chief Sustainability Officer at the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB). She brings 17 years of experience in sustainable design, in addition to the Master of Urban and Environmental Planning degree she earned from the University of Virginia.
Prior to joining the DOB team, Gina was the former Director of Sustainability at Ennead Architects – where she led and consulted on nearly five dozen LEED-Certified registered projects. Gina has volunteered with the US Green Building Council (USGBC) since 1997, assisting with the technical development of multiple LEED rating systems, a Subject Matter Expert on three LEED exams, and was a Founding interim-officer of the National Capital Region USGBC Chapter.
At the Department of Buildings, Gina is working on implementation of New York City’s Greater, Greener Buildings Plan, which is actually laws designed to address benchmarking, energy codes, audits and retro-commissioning, and lighting and sub metering. She leads a DOB team of specialists charged with developing procedures to enforce the Energy Code, and supporting continued development of the New York City Building Code to
accommodate advances in sustainability.
Gina serves as the DOB liaison to New York City’s Solar America Cities partnership led by the City University of New York and is appointed to the NY State Code Council Green Advisory Working Group.
Gina is a licensed architect in New York and Virginia.
Amanda Kaminsky
Sustainable Construction Manager The Durst Organization
Amanda Kaminsky is the Sustainable Construction Manager at The Durst Organization. Amanda collaborates closely with design and construction teams and supply chains to optimize materials and systems design, procurement, and handling from project inception through construction and into ongoing operations. She is currently working on 2+ million square feet of new residential and mixed-use development in Manhattan, along with the optimization of The Durst Organization’s existing building portfolio. Amanda helped create New York City’s first residential high-rise organics collection program at The Helena with the Department of Sanitation.
Amanda sits on the Real Estate Board of NY Sustainability Committee, the Board for Healthy Building Network, and is Vice Chair of the Health Product Declaration Collaborative Board, which oversees the HPD open standard format for reporting transparent building product content and associated health data. Amanda also manages Building Product Ecosystems, a collaboration initiated by The Durst Organization, in partnership with The New School and the City University of New York, to optimize the health of construction product ecosystems
through material and systems research and innovation, process improvements, policy/code evolution, and accessible education. Amanda has a BS in Architecture from the University of Virginia.
