Built to Lead: Lessons in Building Decarbonization and Resilience
September 11, 2025
On September 24, A Better City began hosting the first in a series of five in-person panel events to showcase the climate leadership of A Better City member companies and institutions, Built to Lead: Lessons in Building Decarbonization and Resilience. Over the last three and a half years, A Better City members have been focused on helping to shape new and updated climate policies that relate to large buildings. This panel series will move from policy to implementation by showcasing how climate leaders are both decarbonizing and fortifying their building stock. The series aims to provide inspiring and replicable strategies for all large building owners.
The series includes:
- Built to Lead: Lessons in Building Decarbonization in Existing Buildings
Wednesday, September 24, 2025 @ 9-10:30 AM at 290 Congress Street, Fort Point Room, Boston, MA 02210- Torey Brooks, Pembroke—relaxing temperature settings in back-of-house pilot
- Saagar Patel, Equity Residential—new window technology pilot
- Al Scaramelli, Beacon Capital—building equipment optimization pilot
- Neetu Siddarth, BXP—waste heat recovery project
- Kailash Viswanathan, Consigli—retrofit phasing pilot in a Hines building
- Built to Lead: Lessons in Building Decarbonization in New Construction
Thursday, October 30, 2025 @ 10-11:30 AM at One Financial Center, Loft on Two, 675 Atlantic Avenue #2nd Floor, Boston, MA 02111- Rustom Cowasjee, Tishman Speyer —Enterprise Research Center (ERC), net zero residential building, hotel, and lab
- Heather Henriksen, Harvard University—ERC, conference center using Mass Timber and low embodied carbon concrete
- David Gillespie, AvalonBay—Salem, MA, passive house development
- Christoph Stump, Trinity Financial—Bronx, NY, passive house development
- Yanni Tsipis, WS Development—Seaport, net zero carbon office building using Sublime cement and all-electric systems
- Randy Boles, Vertex—Seaport, 95% electric lab development
- Built to Lead: Lessons in Building Decarbonization - New Technologies and Opportunities
Wednesday, December 17, 2025 @ 10-11:30 AM at 290 Congress Street, Fort Point Room, Boston, MA 02210- John Fernández, Professor, Department of Architecture, MIT, and Co-founder of Lamaar.AI—AI building envelope evaluation
- Zeyneb Magavi, Executive Director, HEET—thermal energy potential of water sources
- John Kastrinos, Lead Hydrologist, Haley & Aldrich and Jacob Knowles, Principal and Chief Sustainability Officer, BR+A—right sizing of geothermal energy
- Colin Schless, Director, Client Decarbonization Services, Turner Construction—hybrid electrification
- Built to Lead: Lesson in Deconstruction and Embodied Carbon
Tuesday, February 3, 2026 @ 10-11:30 AM at 290 Congress Steet, Fort Point Room, Boston, MA 02210- Irmak Turan, Associate, Climate and Sustainability, Arup—Circularity and embodied carbon at airports
- Dennis Carlberg, Chief Sustainability Officer & Associate Vice President for Climate Action, Boston University—Retrofit of BU’s Warren Towers
- Caroline Murray, Regional Sustainability Manager, Turner Construction Company—Deconstruction and reuse of office space
- Andrew Thompson, Interim Executive Director, Boston Building Resources—Material donation and reuse
- Built to Lead: Lessons in Resilience, TBD
For any questions about the series, please contact Yve Torrie.
