Power Panel: Women Leading Sustainability

Sandeep Ahuja, cove.tool Co-Founder & CEO, joined fellow AEC thought-leaders, Sara Neff, Liz Crosson, Lindsay Baker, and Meishka Mitchell, at the My Green Building Conference & Expo for a thought-provoking panel around sustainability. They touched on a variety of topics relevant to the  green building  space, including the recent paradigm shift towards sustainability and resultant increase in jobs with a sustainable focus, integration of green building and equity, making a business case for green building initiatives, and what makes them excited about the future of green building. 

Sandeep Ahuja

Sandeep Ahuja is the CEO and Co-Founder of cove.tool, the end-to-end building performance and data app. Most recently, Sandeep presented at the UN environment assembly, with 1500 global delegates, on the impact of buildings on climate change, showcased at the TEDx Atlanta, and won the Forbes 30 under 30. She has spoken at SXSW, as well as multiple architectural and engineering conferences including AIA, ACUI, ASHRAE, Facades+, Tech+, and Build Tech. She's an expert in daylighting and energy modeling with a high focus on sustainability. With her desire to bring automation into the AEC world, she is pioneering the integration of data-driven thinking into the design and construction process by developing and intelligent software.

Sara Neff

Sara Neff is Head of Sustainability for Lendlease Americas, where she provides leadership and management oversight in developing, implementing, and driving Lendlease's corporate sustainability framework in the Americas region. She was previously Senior Vice President, Sustainability at Kilroy Realty Corporation, where she was instrumental in the architecture, initiation, and execution of Kilroy’s sustainability program. She serves on the boards of the CLEEN Project, GBCI, and GRID Alternatives. Previously, she served on the USGBC Advisory Council and as board chair of USGBC Los Angeles, in addition to serving with the Young Professionals in Energy Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, and the BOMA International Energy and Environment Committee. Sara has been named a Woman of Influence by the Los Angeles Business Journal, a 40-under-40 awardee by the Urban Land Institute, a Women in Sustainability Leader by Green Building & Design magazine, and she received Nareit’s 2020 Leader in the Light Leadership Personified award. She is a LEED Fellow and holds a BS from Stanford and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Liz Crosson

Liz Crosson recently joined the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California as its first Chief Sustainability, Resiliency and Innovation Officer. She previously served as a consultant to the LA County Chief Sustainability Office as the team’s liaison to the 88 LA cities and as a resource on sustainability and climate for municipal sustainability staff. She also previously served as Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Director of Infrastructure and was the Mayor’s chief policy liaison to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and the five bureaus under the Department of Public Works. For the Mayor, she was charged with delivering the Mayor’s bold agenda on water, energy, waste and public right of way infrastructure. She also previously served as the Mayor’s Deputy Chief Sustainability Officer and his first appointed Water Policy Advisor. From 2010-2015, Liz was the Executive Director of Los Angeles Waterkeeper, a nonprofit organization that protects and restores waterways throughout Los Angeles County through Clean Water Act enforcement, advocacy, restoration and community action. She received a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science, Policy and Management from the University of California-Berkeley and earned a master’s degree in Biology from Southern Oregon University and a juris doctorate from Lewis & Clark Law School, where she graduated with honors and a certificate in environmental law.

Lindsay Baker

As CEO of the International Living Future Institute, Lindsay Baker is the organization’s chief strategist, charged with delivering on its mission to lead the transformation toward a civilization that is socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative. Lindsay is a climate entrepreneur, experienced in launching and growing innovative businesses. Her introduction to the green building movement began at the Southface Institute in Atlanta, where she interned before entering Oberlin College to earn a BA in Environmental Studies. She was one of the first 40 staff members at the U.S. Green Building Council, working to develop consensus about what the LEED rating system would become. She then earned an MS from the University of California at Berkeley in Architecture, with a focus on Building Science, and spent five years as a building science researcher at the UC Berkeley Center for the Built Environment. Lindsay applied her experience around the study of heat, light, and human interactions in buildings to a role with Google’s Green Team, and later co-founded a smart buildings start-up called Comfy, which grew over five years to 75 employees and a global portfolio of clients. She was the first Global Head of Sustainability and Impact at WeWork, where she built the corporate sustainability team and programs from scratch. Lindsay is a Senior Fellow at the Rocky Mountain Institute, and a lecturer at UC Berkeley. She serves on several non-profit boards, and is an advisor and board member for numerous climate tech startups.

Meishka Mitchell 

Meishka has over 18 years of visionary leadership in climate justice and equitable and inclusive neighborhood development. Before joining Emerald Cities Collaborative, Meishka served as Vice President of Camden Community Partnership, a nonprofit community and economic development organization in her hometown of Camden, New Jersey. At Camden Community Partnership, Meishka cultivated a resident-driven approach to neighborhood planning and development of parks and open spaces, infrastructure, historic preservation, and placemaking. An “accidental environmentalist”, Meishka has spent her career tackling environmental injustice in frontline communities. She has led efforts to address water equity, illegal dumping, air quality, brownfields redevelopment, and green energy with a focus on community education and engagement. She is committed to the expansion of the term “environment” to be inclusive of urban environments and BIPOC communities. Meishka has established several national award-winning sustainability collaborations that have become replicable models for collective impact in underserved communities. She is also a known advocate and sought out speaker for climate justice.