Announcing YOUR new Education Director, Allison Zuchman

Announcing YOUR new Education Director, Allison Zuchman

BE+ is thrilled to announce this game-changing addition to our growing team, and if you don’t already know her—all you have to do is read her powerful introduction letter to see why. Welcome Allison!!!

I am excited to share that I have joined Built Environment Plus (BE+) as the new Education Director. I am responsible for managing all things education at BE+ including virtual and in-person trainings, strategic educational events, and the Workforce Training Fund General Program and Express Program. Keep your eye out too for new educational offerings, comprehensive training and certificate programs, and the next evolution of the Green Building Leadership Institute.

I am not sure about you but the past two years have left me exhausted and wondering what is next. Wondering what the world will look like post-pandemic. Wondering how we will navigate the changes in our personal and professional lives that have resulted from a world turned upside-down. Wondering how our lives and work will evolve in the future. One thing we cannot deny is that health and wellness, sustainability, and social equity and justice are rightfully no longer on the fringes. This is a time of great opportunity for us in the sustainability and building sector. Just do a web search for ‘sustainability jobs’ to see how much of what we do is in demand. How we design, build, and occupy our buildings, landscapes, and communities is in the forefront. How we do our work and how we work together is just as important as what we create.

What this means for me in my new role as Education Director is that I can use all that I know and all I have learned working for the past 17 years as a sustainability consultant, and prior to that as a designer and architect, to make an even greater positive impact in our field and in the world. I am proud of the strategic, forward thinking, environmentally and socially responsible work I have done to date including all the projects I have worked on with many of you. I have helped organizations develop sustainability initiatives and internal corporate practices, trained staff and team members, led multi-disciplinary teams to earn green building certifications on projects, and sorted through all the green building requirements and national, state, and local energy and sustainable development codes and regulations. In the past, I was a member of the USGBC Education Development & Training Committee, consulted on a USGBC board working group to assist in developing LEED rating system language, and was a GBCI Certification Reviewer.

I first began my involvement with the BE+ community in 2008 while it was the local USGBC Affiliate as part of the Green Roundtable, then as the Massachusetts Membership Forum, then as the US Green Building Council MA Chapter and ultimately as Built Environment Plus. Since then, I have attended events and trainings, taught courses, volunteered on the green building tour committee for Greenbuild Boston, and most recently volunteered as the chair for the BE+ Women in Green Roundtable.

Above all else, I am proud of and value the relationships I have in our community with colleagues, project teams, and organizations I have worked with. I look forward to continuing the trajectory of my past work while building new relationships with those of you I have yet to work with. I see great new opportunities for us to further advance sustainability in the built environment.

What this means for you is that you now have an Education Director. I can help you enhance your current employee training program, or if you don’t currently have a staff member managing education for your company, I can help you figure out your training needs and devise a training plan. We can choose individual courses for your staff or we can plan a curriculum over an extended period of time. You may not realize the breadth of courses that BE+ offers. As expected, for a green building organization, we offer technical courses covering topics such as energy codes, decarbonization, healthy materials, building science fundamentals, LEED, WELL, and Passive House. BE+ also offers software courses, and leadership, team building, and change management courses. In most cases, we can connect you to state funding that covers between 50% – 100% of the course cost for your Massachusetts employees.

Want to learn more? Check out the BE+ website for an updated course training catalog and a list of current courses open for registration, and for information on the grant programs. Attend our monthly roundtables to explore specific issues and topic areas. 

We are working on a BE+ monthly education newsletter as a simple resource to keep you updated on available courses, instructors, partners, and funding. If you are interested in being added to the upcoming education newsletter, sign up here.

Keep in touch. Reach out to me and the BE+ team with any questions you have. In this exciting, hopeful, thought-provoking world, let’s keep learning, supporting, and inspiring each other. Knowing you all are here working together doing this important and challenging work motivates me.

 

Allison Zuchman
Education Director
Built Environment Plus

Managing Change in Crisis

Managing change is a constant in business, but in these times, we are faced with more and faster changes with no way to predict what will happen from day to day. Pervasive uncertainty kills productivity and morale. Successful change management results from a combination of effective leadership, clear and targeted communication, team building, emotional intelligence and appropriate levels of transparency. Leaders need to create for employees as much safety and predictability as they can, as well as some level of perceived control in their lives. The practical tools and approaches shared in this webinar are useful all the time, and especially valuable during this pandemic and attendees will leave with immediately applicable strategies.
This course is also available through the Workforce Training grant.

Meet the Presenter

Barbra Batshalom

Barbra Batshalom

Sustainable Performance Institute, Founder

Barbra has been a leader in the green building movement since 1998 when she left 12 years of traditional architecture practice to found The Green Roundtable (GRT) a nonprofit whose mission was making green building mainstream. GRT was the USGBC’s Affiliate in MA for 9 years and supported the growth of the LEED program. 

Sustainable Performance Institute (SPI), originally a program of GRT, focuses on high-level interventions to institutionalize sustainability at the organizational level in processes, systems and policies nationally, working with companies to implement change management strategies and achieve measurable improvements in performance and profitability across their portfolios. SPI’s SMARTsustainability ™ program provides a framework to evaluate the capability of A/E/C firms to deliver consistent, high quality sustainability services and was adopted by HUD for affordable housing developers. 

SPI’s transformative workshop programs have been delivered to hundreds of organizations nation-wide to help raise the bar on professional practice in the industry. Barbra is an adjunct professor teaching Sustainable Real Estate Development in Brandeis University’s International Business School. She has served on numerous boards, government 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. 

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.

Boost Organizational Resilience: People, Processes, Places Thriving in a Time of Crisis

We are now seeing how critical organizational resilience is and how unprepared we are to deal with the human side of a crisis – from business continuity to psychological health. This webinar addresses the three pillars of resilience: People, processes, places, with a focus on the people and people-related processes. We address business processes, single points of failure, data security, managing people in a virtual environment and more. We will record and archive this presentation if you can not join live.

In our industry, we think of resilience predominantly as a physical infrastructure issue – passive survivability, uninterrupted power supply, and managing storm surges and flooding. The other side of resilience is business continuity and the human aspect of organizational function. Our current experience with COVID-19 is truly emphasizing how critical it is to be prepared to address the human dimension and manage operations from that perspective.

This webinar will address the issues of enhancing organizational resilience during times of crisis in general and a pandemic in particular. In the current situation where most people are working remotely, a variety of business processes, and ‘cultural’ norms are adversely affected. We will discuss the three pillars of resilience: People, processes, places, with a focus on the people and people-related processes.

Staff who are in managerial or leadership positions, will need to adapt leadership styles to accommodate the new reality of remote teams, and cultivate a stronger sense of team membership to facilitate productivity. In addition, staff will have the increased burden of balancing work obligations and home responsibilities (especially if they have younger children or others requiring more care).

The webinar will provide answers for the following questions:
1.     What are the psychological principles that should guide engaging with employees throughout the process of dealing with crisis?
2.     How can a “single point of failure” be avoided?
3.     Which of our business processes are vulnerable to disruption?
4.     How do we avoid burnout and employee turnover?

We will review practical “fixes” addressing issues related to communication; structuring the workday; and maintaining staff engagement. Finally, we will review strategies for self-care, personal resilience, and caring for others (employees, family members, etc.).

Meet the Presenter

Dr. Guy Sapirstein

Dr. Guy Sapirstein

Resilience Consulting

With a PhD in Clinical Psychology, Guy has been on the cutting edge of applied social science for the past 20 years. Following the events of September 11, 2001 he began collaborating on the development of models for enhancing resilience through individual, community and organizational preparedness and response. Those models have been successfully implemented across the United States and internationally. Currently he splits his time between coaching clients on personal and organizational resilience, helping leaders implement strategies for resilience in their organizations, and providing resilience focused psychotherapy for individuals and couples.

An experienced speaker, Guy has presented at numerous conferences including the first UN sponsored International Strategy for Disaster Reduction conference in Davos, Switzerland.  His articles have appeared in academic journals, trade publications and textbooks. Additionally, he co-authored several manuals (on crisis response and interventions) that have been translated into several languages and widely distributed by IBM Corporation as part of their crisis response following disasters in the USA, Pakistan, China, the Philippines and Haiti. Guy holds a PhD from the University of Connecticut and a BA in Social Studies from Bar-Ilan University in Israel.