2025 Board of Directors Election

Boston Climate Action Network

Hessann Farooqi is the Executive Director of the Boston Climate Action Network (BCAN). Prior to this, he served as BCAN’s Advocacy Director following roles in the private sector and in the Office of US Senator Ed Markey. He has also served on various local and federal political campaigns. Along the way, Hessann worked in university sustainability communications at Boston University, where he also attended college.

Hessann focuses on building decarbonization and energy policy and implementation at the state and local levels, with a particular focus on residential decarbonization. Hessann is passionate about creating scalable, replicable, and fundable programming and advocacy that bridges divides across multiple stakeholder groups and engages residents throughout.

What is your background in the green building industry?

Leading BCAN, Hessann advocates for policy and organizes Boston residents around building energy efficiency and decarbonization. While at BCAN, Hessann’s leadership led to the successful passage of an Executive Order requiring City buildings to be fossil fuel-free. He has also been involved in the Net-Zero Carbon Zoning Code.

Beyond advocacy, Hessann dramatically scaled up BCAN’s efforts connecting residents with Mass Save to improve their home’s energy efficiency by assembling a funded team of community groups. Hessann also oversaw multiple research projects around green buildings. Most recently, he led BCAN’s advocacy to improve Mass Save, which achieved key equity and decarbonization provisions in the next Mass Save Three-Year Plan.

In addition, Hessann was appointed by Mayor Wu to serve on the City of Boston’s Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO) Review Board. In this role, he oversees the implementation of the most expansive municipal green building law in New England.

List organizations in the building and/or environmental industries you are actively involved in:

Hessann’s key affiliation is as Executive Director of the Boston Climate Action Network (BCAN), which has advanced local green building organizing and advocacy for almost 25 years. He is also co-coordinator of the Boston Green New Deal Coalition, which collaborates with the City on key energy advocacy. He also sits on the City’s BERDO Review Board.

Hessann also advised the White House and the US Department of Energy on their “Opportunity Project” technical development sprint. Finally, he is an advisor to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) on the development of the Greater Boston Climate Action Plan via their J40 Advisory Group.

Briefly list your areas of expertise. For example; energy, renewable energy, water, indoor air quality, resiliency, health and wellness:

Energy efficiency, renewable energy, environmental justice

Describe any involvement and interactions with Built Environment Plus (USGBC MA) in the past five years:

During the advocacy process for Boston’s Net Zero Carbon Zoning Code, Hessann engaged with Meredith Elbaum of BE+ to coordinate positions. Though BE+ was separately involved with this process, Hessann valued BE+’s tremendous expertise, particularly on LEED certifications, and aimed to ensure his organization learned from this experience.

What will you bring to the Board of Directors?

Particularly on the residential decarbonization front, Hessann understands the complex challenges and litany of stakeholders through experience with both large and small buildings.

As Executive Director of a small organization, Hessann is well-versed in nonprofit management. He sets strategic direction and executes fundraising strategies to maximize revenue from individual donors and foundations. He leads recruitment for employees and volunteers alike. He also leads engagement with government officials, media, and others. He is also familiar with Board operations as the primary facilitator of the BCAN Board of Directors, which Hessann has transformed in his time at the organization. He is also the go-to spokesperson for the Boston climate advocacy community, making regular appearances on panels, speeches, and in the media on climate issues.

Hessann aims to bring his combination of management, advocacy, and communication experience to support BE+’s mission, which he has long admired.

Town of Brookline

Tina is a Historic Preservation Planner, a career choice driven by a deep passion for reuse of buildings and their materials. As Senior Preservation Planner for the Town of Brookline she has guided projects of all sizes through the regulatory process, serving as a resource for homeowners, architects, contractors, developers and Preservation Commissioners. Tina’s work focuses on the connection between culture, history and ecology, connecting the concerns for environment and heritage through the practice of restoration, salvage and reuse. Author of “Deconstructing Heritage” (Journal of Cultural Heritage Management, 2020), Tina advocates for building deconstruction and materials reuse as a strategy for historic preservation practice, replacing demolition as a final treatment for building removal. In her spare time, Tina also co-owns and operates a small construction company located in rural western Massachusetts. Hilltown Homestead Services brings a holistic approach to landscape and building design that focuses on local, natural materials.

What is your background in the green building industry?

Tina has spent her career in Historic Preservation helping her colleagues and the public understand that reuse is green building. She sees building the culture of reuse as a core mission of Historic Preservation, and a key component of any sustainability plan. In the realm of new construction, she educates clients about opportunities for reuse as well as low carbon natural building products. She is excited to start work on her company’s first straw SIP panel house in the spring!

List organizations in the building and/or environmental industries you are actively involved in:

Build Reuse; Association for Preservation Technology; MA DEP Deconstruction Workgroup

Briefly list your areas of expertise. For example; energy, renewable energy, water, indoor air quality, resiliency, health and wellness:

Building reuse planning & advocacy, historic preservation policy, deconstruction policy

Describe any involvement and interactions with Built Environment Plus (USGBC MA) in the past five years:

N/A

What will you bring to the Board of Directors?

As a Town Planner and small business owner, Tina brings unique perspectives to the board that they may not currently have access to. She is familiar with the permitting process from the perspective of both staff and applicant, with most of her project experience centering on small scale residential construction & renovation. As a Preservation Planner she is knowledgeable about the regulatory framework of historic preservation and where it can be leveraged to encourage not only the reuse of buildings, but their materials as well. She works in the state’s largest Town while living and operating a business in one of the smallest, giving her insights into the needs of both urban and rural communities.

Hideo Sasaki Foundation

Jennifer Lawrence is the Executive Director of the Hideo Sasaki Foundation, which supports innovative and inclusive design solutions for complex social and environmental challenges. Providing grants for communities to design their own solutions, jobs for young designers to learn about careers, and opportunities for people to learn together about equity in design, the Hideo Sasaki Foundation believes strongly that the power of design belongs to everyone. Prior to the Sasaki Foundation, Jennifer worked for over a decade as a Sustainability Planner at the City of Cambridge, focusing on community engagement to ensure that community voice in planning initiatives is equitably represented, climate change vulnerability and mitigation planning, climate communications, bikeshare, and more. She also ran a small nonprofit focused on environmental justice and the built environment in Somerville.

She also serves as a board member of Naveo, a community credit union that promotes financial inclusion and empowerment and is passionate about creating and supporting initiatives that foster civic participation, social equity, and cultural diversity in the built environment.

What is your background in the green building industry?

As a sustainability planner in Cambridge, Jennifer worked extensively on municipal sustainability efforts, including the Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment, the Climate Change Communications plan, co-facilitation of the Bluebikes public bikeshare program, the Glocal Challenge (youth engagement in creating innovative solutions to local environmental challenges in partnership with the Cambridge Public School District and EF Education First), Envision Cambridge, the Cambridge Science Festival, PARK(ing) Day, and much more. As an executive director at Groundwork Somerville, she facilitated many sustainability programs, including founding the Green Team youth employment program, the Community Corridor Planning Project looking at land uses along the future green line extension, and various schoolyear gardening and farming programs.

List organizations in the building and/or environmental industries you are actively involved in:

Jennifer partners closely with the Boston Society for Architecture to engage young people in design, and to offer opportunities for practitioners to learn more about just cities and design equity and to engage more deeply with community.

Briefly list your areas of expertise. For example; energy, renewable energy, water, indoor air quality, resiliency, health and wellness:

Community engagement; health and wellness, transportation, resiliency

Describe any involvement and interactions with Built Environment Plus (USGBC MA) in the past five years:

Jennifer was a panelist at USGBC Live, Boston, 2022: “Work-based Learning Programs for Youth Engagement”

What will you bring to the Board of Directors?

Jennifer has a deep commitment to meaningful community engagement in the planning and design fields, as is demonstrated in almost 20 years of experience throughout the greater Boston region. She will bring an equity lens to work in the built environment, almost twenty years of lived experience in the field, and a strong work ethic.

VHB

Erika Johnson, AICP, LEED AP BD+C, ENV SP is an urban planner with over 20 years of experience in permitting, campus planning, and sustainability planning. She joined VHB in 2021 as a Senior Environmental Planner on the Urban Permitting Team, where she currently manages multi-disciplined technical teams to prepare and file permit documentation for private developers, public agencies, utilities, and universities to the Cities of Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, and the MEPA Office. She also advises clients on permitting strategy, sustainable development zoning requirements, and building performance standards reporting. Prior to joining VHB, Erika was a Senior Campus Planner with Harvard University for nearly 9 years, primarily focused on regulatory due diligence, demographic reporting, and student housing trends analyses for schools and units across campus. Her experience also includes time as a campus planning consultant and as a civilian Master Planner for expeditionary military bases in eastern Afghanistan.

What is your background in the green building industry?

Erika’s involvement in sustainability began when she volunteered on a committee for the 2008 Greenbuild conference in Boston, but her motivation to learn more came from working as a military base planner at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. She was struck by the sheer amount of waste – plastic utensils at every meal, thousands of empty plastic water bottles, tents covered in polyurethane foam insulation, and unused construction materials deteriorating in the elements – all of it eventually incinerated or buried. Shortly after she returned to Boston, LEED standards started to emerge in zoning regulations, which prompted her to delve into the language and practice of sustainable development to stay relevant in her career. Since then, Erika completed graduate coursework in sustainability through the Harvard University Extension School, earned the LEED AP BD+C and ENV SP credentials, and found her niche working with clients at the intersection of planning and green building regulation.

List organizations in the building and/or environmental industries you are actively involved in:

Erika joined APA in 2004 and earned her AICP credential in 2006. Most recently, she served as a peer reviewer of session proposals in the Climate Change, Energy, and the Environment program area for the 2025 National Planning Conference. She has been active in the PennDesign Alumni Association since 2013 (Boston Regional Chapter Director, 2013-2016; Board of Directors, 2014-present) by organizing events, fundraising, and providing outreach to alumni across the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, historic preservation, city planning, fine arts, and urban spatial analytics. In addition, Erika is a member of USGBC, NESEA, and ISI.

Briefly list your areas of expertise. For example; energy, renewable energy, water, indoor air quality, resiliency, health and wellness:

As detailed in other responses, Erika specializes in sustainable development permitting requirements (including LEED requirements and Net Zero Carbon Zoning), site planning, campus planning, and building performance regulations.

Describe any involvement and interactions with Built Environment Plus (USGBC MA) in the past five years:

A lapsed member of USGBC MA, Erika rejoined Built Environment Plus in 2020 as she prepared to take the LEED AP BD+C exam. She regularly attends the Decarbonizing Existing Buildings Alliance roundtables (mainly so she can advise her co-op on methods to decarbonize their circa 1920 multifamily residential buildings) as well as the annual membership meeting and other educational and networking events throughout the year.

What will you bring to the Board of Directors?

As a planning professional, Erika approaches situations from a holistic perspective, understanding how various disciplines rely on or interact with one another. In her current role with VHB, she works with architects, site/civil engineers, MEPs, wetland scientists, and transportation engineers, among others, to find solutions between competing interests or raise considerations that can only be seen from this overarching view. Through her involvement with the PennDesign Alumni Association, she understands the role and function of a Board of Directors and knows how to contribute to a team effort to set and achieve strategic organizational goals. Previously a co-leader of a Girl Scout Troop in Cambridge, Erika also enjoys providing guidance and mentorship to youth, students, and emerging professionals who are looking to establish their own career paths, though she no longer “knows someone” who can get you a box of Thin Mints.

To align with our strategic plan, we are seeking the representation of experts from a variety of sectors involved in the design, construction, and operation of our built environment. BE+ currently has 14 Board members. According to our bylaws, we can have no fewer than seven and no more than 19 Directors. In addition, BE+ seeks a diversity of perspective from its Directors across professions, areas of expertise/interest, as well as gender, age, race, and ethnicity.

In order to increase the diversity of the board and potential participation by members, the BE+ board has embarked on a new process to support greater participation by members:

1. The nomination period is from 10/24/2024 to 12/13/2024.
2. There are three methods to get nominated to the board:
               a. Members can nominate themselves
               b. Members can nominate other members
               c. A Board selected Nominating Committee will nominate members to the Board.

Seats are organized based on the following professional sectors: Design Consultants, Construction/Manufacturing, Owners/Operations, Policy/Advocacy, Other Fields not named above (e.g. Education, Utilities, Law, Community Development, Clean Energy, etc.). Seven of those seats are reserved for one representative from various professions outlined in the table below.   

After the nomination period is complete, the Board and the Nominating Committee will vet the candidates and bucket them according to the categories noted in the tables below. The Board has discretion to increase/decrease numbers in each Professional Category by 1 to align with our strategic plan and diversity goals.  The Board will vote on the final Ballot and number of Board members for the year.

Board Composition

In 2025, we are aiming to have fifteen elected and one appointed Board Members. Eleven Board seats are not up for election this year. There are three incumbents seeking reelection.

Design Consultants:
There are three open seats with three incumbent Directors seeking reelection.

• Engineering: incumbent seeking reelection – Jacob Knowles, BR+A
• Open (2): incumbents seeking reelection – Kate Brubiski, Arrowstreet and Sarah Michelman, The Green Engineer

Construction/Manufacturing:
There are no open seats.

Owner/Operations:
There are no open seats.

Policy/Advocacy:
There is one open seat:

• Open

Other + EPMA: Fields could include Education, Community Development, Finance, DEI, Clean Energy, Fundraising/Development, etc.
There is one open seat:

• Open

BE+ has identified these priority professional categories for new board members and encourages people from these fields to be nominated:

• Building Operations & Maintenance (energy)
• Community Development
• Government/Advocacy

In addition to specific sectors in the field of design, construction, and operation of our built environment, the board is looking for expertise in specific areas:

• Development/Fundraising
• Finance
• Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)

A BE+ Board Member…

• Has knowledge of BE+ mission, goals, and objectives and is able to promote them effectively;
• Has the experience and influence needed by BE+ and/or can also represent one or more disciplines that can help balance the Board’s membership;
• Has showcased leadership skills in their community and can use their experience to successfully work with the rest of the Board and its committees;
• Is capable of being an active public representative of the organization and can successfully include others in the work of BE+;
• Is a member in good standing of BE+. Double-check your membership status by visiting the BE+ Join It membership profile.

The Board as a whole cannot have more than two Directors from the same company or organization at a time. A board member should expect to commit an average of 3-6 hours a month. Monthly commitment may vary based on initiatives, committee work, and events.

Board members are expected to… 

• Review financial statements and the budget and to otherwise help the board fulfill its fiduciary responsibilities;
• Familiarize themselves with bylaws and other organizational documents;
• Attend at minimum fifty percent of board meetings per year either in person or virtually;
• Read board materials in advance of monthly board meetings and to come prepared to ask questions and participate in discussions.
• Currently the board meets once per month virtually or in person;
• Serve on one or more committees of the board and actively participate in committee work. Current committees include; Education, Community Building, Governance, and Advocacy;
• Be an active community member of Built Environment Plus
• Secure a minimum of $1500 necessary for BE+ to achieve its mission, whether from the Board member’s own organization, from personal contributions or in using personal relationships and connections to actively recruit sponsorships and memberships. Alternatives to actual monetary contributions include supporting efforts to bring in monetary resources (such as teaching courses, participating in panels, etc.).
• Responsibly represent the organization to their respective communities and advocate for BE+’s mission, programs, and services as appropriate.
• Support initiatives and events, panels, etc. to further the organization’s mission. These may include efforts around DEI, elections, educational programming, advocacy efforts, etc. This is an active and engaged Board.

Each board member is required to vote and have an informed decision after a thorough assessment of an issue. Specific tasks which will need groundwork and a vote by Board members include:

• Decisions on policies, goals, objectives, and priorities;
• Collaboration with other Board members and staff in the process, updates, and approval of specific strategies and objectives;
• Nominate and vote officers for the BE+ Board;
• Oversee and evaluate the strength and success of the projects and programs and make sure that these projects and programs are reaching the appropriate goals needed by the organization;
• Approve and oversee operation, property, and equipment budgets;
• Facilitate selection, employment, and evaluation of the Executive Director;
• Support the Executive Director in fulfilling their job duties;
• Review and update the Strategic Plan as required.

BE+ seeks an experienced green industry professional who has connections and the ability to bring new members/sponsors to the organization. We seek a board leader to help cultivate the board’s leadership role in support of staff as part of a broader commitment to increase awareness about the importance of our mission, influence public policy, and expand our reach. Preference for candidates who have prior board member experience.