Green Building – From Concept to Practice

Barbra Batshalom is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Sustainable Performance Institute and past founder and president of the USGBC Affiliate in Massachusetts. She is an industry leader whose vision drives the organization’s programs to transform the market from public policy to professional practice. Her work focuses on the intersection of systems, processes and culture. With a diverse background of fine arts, social psychology and 20 years in architecture and sustainability consulting, she brings a variety of skills to her work and a unique perspective engaging the human dynamics of decision-making and creative collaboration to technical work. She’s an educator, public speaker and change agent that works with a wide range of governmental, institutional and private sector organizations to help them institutionalize sustainability and achieve measurable improvements in performance and profitability. SPI’s green firm Certification is the first industry program to provide a framework for evaluating the capability of design and construction firms to deliver a consistent, high quality sustainability service and was adopted by HUD in 2011. SPI’s Green Firm Boot Camp workshop program has been delivered to hundreds of firms nation-wide to help raise the bar on professional practice in the industry. Barbra teaches sustainable real estate development in Brandeis University’s International Business School. She has served on numerous boards, task forces and committees to help develop public and corporate policies for sustainability and teaches courses on change management for sustainability for professionals around the world.