2009 Speaker Biographies
Paul Saginaw
Jason McLennan is considered one of the most influential individuals in the green building movement today, McLennan’s work has made a strong impact on the shape and direction of green building in the United States and Canada and he is a much sought after presenter and consultant on a wide-variety of green building and sustainability topics.
Jason McLennan serves as the CEO of the Cascadia Green Building Council, the Pacific Northwest’s leading organization in the field of green building and sustainable development. Cascadia is a chapter of both the US Green Building Council and the Canadian Green Building Council. He is the author of the Living Building Challenge an international green building program and co-creator of Pharos, the most advanced building material rating system in North America.
Jason is known as an international thought leader in the green architecture movement and has lectured on sustainability across the US and Canada. His work in the sustainable design field has been published or reviewed in dozens of journals, magazines conference proceedings and books including Architecture, Architectural Record, Dwell, Plenty, Metropolis, NY Times, The Globe and Mail, The World and I, Ecostructure and Environmental Design and Construction Magazine. He is the author of four books; The Philosophy of Sustainable Design, The Dumb Architect’s Guide to Glazing Selection, the Ecological Engineer and Zugenruhe. The Philosophy of Sustainable Design is currently used as a textbook in over 60 universities and colleges and is distributed widely throughout Europe and North America.
He is a former Principal at BNIM Architects, one of the founders of the green design movement in the United States, where he worked on many of the leading high performance projects in the country including LEED Platinum, Gold and zero energy projects. At BNIM he created the building science team known as Elements, which set new standards for energy and resource efficiency on many of its projects in various building types. Jason is also the founder and CEO of Ecotone Publishing, the only dedicated green building publisher in North America. Jason was recently named one of the top 40 under 40 most influential individuals in the design and construction field by Building Design and Construction magazine.
Jason was born and raised in Ontario, Canada, was educated in Oregon, Kansas and Glasgow, Scotland and now resides on Bainbridge Island, Washington with his wife Tracy, three sons Julian, Declan and Aidan, and their daughter Rowan.
Visit Jason's website.
David C.E. Williams is the CEO of ShoreBank Pacific, the first commercial bank in the United States with a commitment to environmentally sustainable community development. Williams came to this position after two prior careers; one in academia and another in manufacturing, and 10 years in commercial banking.
A physicist with Masters Degrees in both Physics and Economics, he taught Physics at the secondary and collegiate level with a focus on energy issues. Moving to the commercial world, he has held progressive positions from MIS director through CFO, manufacturing manager and chief engineer, to CEO in companies in the Oil and Gas, robotics, boat building, and steel fabrication industries. These companies have been both local to the Pacific Northwest and international in scope including, boat building in Taiwan at the early stage of its transition to an industrial economy.
Through ShoreBank Pacific’s leadership in sustainable banking, the bank has demonstrably changed the behavior of its borrowers and stimulated the economy of rural communities in the Pacific Northwest, and has developed the premier positive evaluation system for assessing the business choices that companies make toward sustainable practices.
Williams has been a speaker throughout the West Coast on sustainable business practices, community development, and necessary industrial changes to support a sustainable Pacific Northwest.
Michelle Barry is the Senior Vice President of The Hartman Group, a consumer market research firm specializing in the areas of health, wellness, natural products and sustainability. Since joining The Hartman Group in 1999, she has pioneered new ways to leverage professional anthropological analysis and ethnographic fieldwork techniques to help clients’ efforts in truly understanding consumer behavior and long-term implications of cultural change. Michelle has consulted with major retailers, food and packaged goods companies, and pharmaceuticals in developing both strategic and tactical direction in today's marketplace.
Michelle holds her doctorate in cultural and medical anthropology with over 17 years experience in the health and wellness arena as both a practitioner and analyst. Extensive national and global anthropological work with a focus on communications and business has made her a thought leader in understanding meaningful intersections in human behavior and cultural trends. Michelle has co-authored two books with The Hartman Group: Reflections on a Cultural Brand and Marketing in the Soul Age, and has appeared on MSNBC, NPR, Oxygen, as well as in national and industry publications.
Martin Melaver, CEO of Melaver, Inc., has never been content with the well-trod path. He has a PhD in literature from Harvard University, an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and splits his time between Savannah and Tel Aviv, Israel. He is the author of Living Above the Store: Building a Business That Creates Value, Inspires Change, and Restores Land and Community. “The economic crash of late 2008 is just the latest evidence of the truth that many have known for so long: that too much of our modern economy is based on a house of cards. We need businesses that not only factor their impact on people and places into their equations for success but also strive to restore the communities and environments in which they operate. How can this be done? In Living Above the Store, Martin Melaver provides a roadmap for creating such a business. It’s not only a “how to” but a “why to” that challenges business as usual to change.” Melaver demonstrates how to:
- Adopt a business model that provides for economic success while contributing to society and the environment
- Shape a business culture that is restorative to a workforce by helping employees realize their highest potential
- Leverage an ethos within a business that “ripples outward” to foster restoration of both land and community
- Embrace a notion of limits to growth
Reframe ideas about competition, proprietary knowledge, and business success
"Martin describes the evolution of his ideas and practices with refreshing candor and humility. He is a role model for me, my students, and anyone interested in building a values-based, sustainable business."
—John Vogel, Adjunct Professor, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
"Living Above the Store breaks the mold on business writing. This is a tale of three generations of the Melaver family, the purported end of the world, and the true nature of enterprise. It is a book about the greening of business to be sure, but it is literature first, brilliant disquisitions and narratives that place commerce within the broader context of history, culture, and the cherished human values that bind us together. Martin Melaver has enlarged the vocabulary of commerce and restored it to a place of honor, a timely gift in an era of disillusionment. You may put it down to absorb what has been written, but you will not forget the stories of courage, the humility of reflection or the import of what has been said, and you will want to read it straight through to the end."
—Paul Hawken, author of The Ecology of Commerce
"Living Above the Store is the right book for these difficult times, when business needs to regain trust. Melaver starts with specific stories of running a family business, sharing successes and failures, frustrations and joys, and then broadens out to illuminate general principles for running a sustainable business. These stories still stick in my mind, long after I have put the book away."
—Marc Gunther, contributing editor, Fortune
Brad Liljequist is the project manager for zHome. For 20 years he has worked as an urban designer and sustainable building advisor, seeking to integrate human communities with the natural environment in ways that are good for both. zHome, sponsored by the City of Issaquah, in partnership with Howland Homes, Built Green of King/Snohomish County, King County, Port Blakely Communities, Puget Sound Energy, and the WSU Energy Program, is an ultra-sustainable, true zero net energy/carbon townhome project that seeks to redefine the paradigm for sustainable residential development in the Northwest. Brad has worked extensively in both the public and private sectors, and strongly believes that a synergy between the issues and competencies of the two are needed for truly creative community development. He was educated at Georgetown University, the University of St. Andrews, the UW Evans School, and Seattle Central Community College.
Rud Browne, from the very beginning, envisioned Ryzex as a company committed to delivering more value to its customers while accepting active responsibility for our environment.
A strong believer in building foundations for sustainable growth, Ryzex has been very consciously built to stand as an example that high growth and profitability can be synonymous with uncompromising ethics, quality, a diverse workforce and environmental responsibility.
Browne currently serves as a board member of the Bellingham Public Development Authority, the Whatcom County Ethics Commission, the Whatcom Community Foundation, the Bellingham City Club and the Western Washington University CEME advisory board. Browne is a member and past Chairman of the Pacific Northwest chapter of the Young Presidents Organization, a member of the Chief Executives Organization, and Rotary. Browne has also served on the board of the Brigid Collins child abuse & family support center; the US Bank of Washington's Advisory board; as Vice President for Ethics for the Vancouver board of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization and other community boards.
In 2006, Inc. magazine recognized Rud’s leadership by selecting Ryzex in the top two of its first ever Inc. Green 50 rankings of the nation’s most environmentally responsible companies. In 2004 Browne was recognized as the Whatcom County Business person of the year and in 2007 as a winner of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year Award
Alistair Jackson brings more than 14 years of hands-on experience in the field of sustainability to his role as a Principal and part-owner of O’Brien & Company. He leads the residential services team, contributes significant experience of organizational sustainability to the Company’s policy and program work and provides strategic and business management leadership.
Alistair applies his knowledge and understanding of sustainable design and green building science to provide technical consulting services, diagnostic analysis, performance testing and green building certification of residential projects at all levels of performance.
He is an experienced trainer, presenter and facilitator. He has applied those skills to support the creation of green building programs from Puget Sound to California and Hawaii and to the development and delivery of trainings to enhance green building capacity in the affordable and market rate housing industry. In 2007, O’Brien & Company was selected as a Provider of LEED for Homes certification, for which Alistair is the Certifier and senior consultant.
Thor Peterson believes that design, defined broadly, sits at the center of both the opportunity and challenges that humanity faces. He has nearly a decade’s worth of experience researching, educating, and developing and managing programs related to green building and resource conservation. Thor’s eight-year tenure with the City of Seattle green building program focused on providing resources and information on residential green building design and products.
While at the City of Seattle, he developed and served as primary author of the Green Home Remodel series of guides, as well as managing the residential green building programming for Seattle Public Utilities and the Seattle Department of Planning and Development. He is also a former chair of the Master Builders of King and Snohomish Counties Built Green Executive Committee, and volunteered for several years as Education Chair of the Central Puget Sound Chapter of the Northwest Ecobuilding Guild.
Most recently, he served as Research Director at the Cascadia Region Green Building Council. Thor owns Synthesis Consultants, focusing on green building research, education and outreach.
