Meet The 2017 Award Winners
The 2017 Women in Sustainability Leadership Awards honored ten amazing, inspiring and determined Women. Meet them below!
Dr. Duygu Erten
Founder & Owner, Turkeco Construction Energy Inc.
A Professional Civil Engineer who has a diverse working and teaching experience, Dr. Erten spent 20 years in the USA before moving back to Turkey. She then became the City Director of İstanbul for the Clinton Foundation and started Turkey GBC. She received the “President’s Award” given by WGBC for her outstanding contributions to the global sustainability movement in 2012. She has been awarded BREEAM FELLOW recognition in 2016. She is the founder of TURKECO Construction and Energy Inc. An SME working on sustainability in the built environment, she is now sharing her industry experience teaching sustainability related courses.
Debora Frodl
Independent Board Director, ITC Holdings Corporation
Debora is an independent director, global C-suite executive and catalyst for transformative growth. She is known as an industry thought partner who has driven differentiated growth strategies that increase performance and stakeholder value. She leverages new thinking on strategy and innovation, keen industry insights and global network to enhance board effectiveness, company growth and cultural transformation.
Ilana Judah
Principal & Founder, ACORN Resilience & Sustainability
Ilana Judah is a senior architect and founder of ACORN Resilience & Sustainability, a boutique firm providing strategic resilient and sustainable design consulting services to building industry stakeholders. Illana was previously Principal and Director of Sustainability at FXCollaborative architects in New York City. She was co-chair of AIANY’s Committee on the Environment from 2010-2016, board member of NY Passive House from 2016-2018, and is a member of several NYC green building task forces. She has taught at Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania and is a frequent lecturer at other universities and industry conferences.
Sandra Leibowitz
Managing Principal, Sustainable Design Consulting, LLC
Sandra Leibowitz has been living and breathing sustainable design and construction for 25 years. Sandra has consulted on over 80 million square feet of green buildings and nearly 3,000 acres of green neighborhood developments. Sandra recently obtained certification for JUST, the International Living Future Institute’s social justice transparency platform and since becoming a female employer, continues to place high priority on fairness in the employment relationship. Sandra constantly leads and mentors, but building relationships with other women has allowed her to learn from their shared experiences.
Catherine Luthin
President, Luthin Associates
JCatherine Luthin has continually focused on improving energy efficiency during her 30 plus years of financial and energy management experience. Catherine has been actively involved in regulatory proceedings with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, New York Public Service Commission, and more. She also held a position on Mayor Bloomberg’s Energy Policy Task Force and currently, she participates on Mayor de Blasio’s 80 by 50 taskforce. Catherine is proud to have founded an energy management company in 1994, investing her own money and time to build this company when energy procurement management and sustainability was a new sector within the industry. In a field dominated by males, Catherine has successfully maintained a leadership position within this industry for 25 years. Regarding mentorship, Catherine knows the importance of sharing her knowledge with others and commits much of her free time to mentoring and actively supporting women in the field. And a fun fact about Catherine is she used to be a blackjack dealer in her youth.
Susan Rochford
VP of Sustainability, Energy Efficiency, and Public Policy, Legrand North America
When Susan Rochford joined Legrand North America in 2010, the term sustainability was neither used nor understood. Susan’s mission to integrate sustainability into business at Legrand was a start-up operation. Susan had to educate, initiate, and demonstrate positive impact to gain the support of the leadership teams across the company. Susan spearheaded the launch of the Legrand Better Communities program in 2014. Since the launch, the program has contributed more than 6300 volunteer hours at over 200 community events and raised more than $1.1 million. Despite having to overcome resistance to change, constant questioning, and doubts, Susan pushed forward with confidence and won trust and support. She continues to make great strides and achievements at Legrand.
Lynn Simon
Senior Vice President, Thornton Tomasetti
For more than 25 years, Lynn Simon has been a role model in sustainability. She was a pioneer in USGBC, being the first salaried employee and helping to shape the organization and LEED. She was and is still today often the only woman in the room in the male dominated industries of architecture, engineering, and construction. Lynn has consulted on countless LEED projects, including some of the earliest to achieve certification. At Thornton Tomasetti, Lynn has taught, mentored, and coached thousands of building industry professionals, both men and women, to advance their knowledge of green building, and open younger professionals eyes to the possibility of having careers in green building. Lynn continues to balance her professional life with motherhood and for almost 15 years has been living in two cities 75 miles apart to allow for the best life for her family. A fun fact about her family is that Lynn actually met her husband at a green building conference in 2001 and believes green building conferences are better than Internet dating!
Gillan Taddune
President & CEO, Banyan Water
Gillan Taddune is a trailblazer in the renewable energy sector and is currently focused on combating water scarcity-one of the world’s biggest concerns. Gillan believes that technology solutions are the most effective way to address critical natural resource issues and has dedicated her career to realizing that vision. At Banyan Water, she recently reached a new milestone of saving over 2.5 billion gallons of water for their commercial real estate customers. As chief economist of the Texas Public Utility Commission, she was tasked with creating a renewable portfolio standard and despite heavy opposition from the oil and gas sector, Gillan implemented rules designing that standard that resulted in more than 9,000 megawatts of new wind energy. Outside of her many accomplishments, she is determined to provide opportunities to female leaders on her team, while encouraging healthy debate among her female and male employees to reach well-informed decisions.
Virge Temme
President, Virge Temme Architecture
Virge Temme has been on the job site since she was a girl. With a father as a General Contractor, building construction has always been in her blood. Virge now devotes her time to LEED certified projects in Wisconsin while being active in the USGBC and the steering committee for the Climate Change Coalition of Door County. In 2015, she set out to design a home that was nearly net-zero and affordable on the average Wisconsin income of $52,000 and she created a house called SAGE-small, affordable, green, and expandable. Now this LEED for HOME registered house is a teaching tool to educate the community. As a recognized leader in her community, Virge use her own experiences and challenges to help others realize they too can overcome their own personal feats to become their best selves. And a very cool fun fact about Virge is that shes loves baking artisanal breads and has studied different techniques by baking 6-8 loaves each week for over a year and won best of show at the county fair!
Wendy Vittori
Executive Director, HPD Collaborative
Prior to HPD Collaborative, Wendy Vittori was most recently founder and principal consultant of Vittori Consulting, providing executive counsel on innovative approaches for strategic management and organization performance. Additionally, she held senior executive roles at Intel and Motorola. Now, as Executive Director of HPD Collaborative, she has helped lead the effort to create the voluntary industry standard for reporting just exactly what is in your building products. And today, there are more than 3,100 published HPD’s and that number is only growing. I guess it should come as no surprise that Wendy was the year-end points leader in an amateur car-racing circuit.