Barbra Batshalom Assoc. AIA, LEED AP (2009)
Transforming Practice; Designing the Future
Back to WID Award of Excellence recipients.
Biography
I am a compulsive systems-thinker addicted to market transformation. For over a decade, I led Green Roundtable's strategic programs focusing on different points in the industry of real estate development and building operations, from practice, to projects to products.
Full Biography
Barbra Batshalom Assoc. AIA, LEED AP
Executive Director, Sustainable Performance Institute
Women in Design Award of Excellence, 2009 winner
The future of our planet and of our profession depends on our ability to co-create collaboratively, innovate and achieve levels of synergy that transform our impact. The AIA 2030 Challenge, LEED and net zero design all define objective performance targets for the industry. Yet, a critical gap remains between rising performance goals and the organizational capability to achieve them (consistently).
My work focuses on helping firms develop the organizational capability to deliver consistent, high performance design across their entire portfolio. To realize this objective, I found myself in an entrepreneurial role, creating companies whose missions have been to transform the market, build community and create a vision for the future that can drive the change that we need. From founding The Green Roundtable in 1998 (which later became the USGBC MA Affiliate), to the NEXUS Green Building Resource Center and most recently, The Sustainable Performance Institute, I help architects ReDesign the design process and develop a project delivery methodology to achieve excellence, manage cultural and systems change and work with building owners to set new expectations and realize their potential. I have consulted to Federal and local governments, institutions and corporations to help them set audacious goals for health and climate and develop implementation plans to achieve those goals over time.
For me, “design” doesn’t apply only to buildings, but to processes of transformation, addressing both the human dynamics of decision making and collaboration with resolving complex technical problems so that we take ownership of designing our future.
