Design the Future

Gayathri Unnikrishnan has spent her career working at the intersection of design, human health, and sustainability. Today, she is the founder and CEO of Liveable, where she helps design teams, manufacturers, and organizations understand the human impact of their work and make a stronger case for solutions that are better for people. Her new book, People Positive, offers a practical framework for bringing human impact into decisions about buildings, products, and communities. She also ho...

Gladys Ly-Au Young is a founding partner of the Seattle firm, Side x Side Architects. The firm is changing practice by broadening the spectrum of architectural services, to promote community focused design that supports equity and sustainability in the built environment. Gladys was honored this year with the Hero Award from Living Future, which recognizes people who are advancing progress toward a living future for all. Gladys described what it’s like to work at the intersection of arch...

Erica McBride is the Regenerative Operations Manager at Architectural Nexus -- known as Arch Nexus. She oversees the performance and integrity of the firm’s two certified Living Buildings, in Sacramento and Salt Lake City. Erica was honored with the Living Future Hero Award in 2025 and holds credentials as a WELL AP, LEED Green Associate, and Living Future Accredited professional. Her work reflects a deep passion for regenerative design and sustainable building operations. Erica is living the...

Stacy Glass is co-founder and executive director of ChemFORWARD, a nonprofit that creates access to chemical hazard data and seeks safer alternatives in partnership with industry. Stacy drives partnerships, collaborations and stakeholder engagement to support this mission and her aim to end toxic chemical exposure and advance human and environmental equity. ChemForward’s theory of change is rooted in collaboration with industry and other parties -- the entire supply chain. What ChemFowa...

Kayleigh Houde is an Associate Principal and Global Computational Projects Lead at Buro Happold, where she is responsible for the harmonized development of new technologies within the open-source coding platform BHoM. Her leadership extends to chairing the MEP 2040 Commitment, participating in the ECHO Project and ASHRAE Center of Excellence for Building Decarbonization. She is also a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches Parametric Life Cycle Assessment. We spok...

As VP of Building Resilient Futures at Enterprise Community Partners, Krista Egger stewards the nonprofit’s national environmental programs, including Green Communities, Health Action Plan, Resilience Academies, and Decarbonization Hubs. Krista went to Oberlin and and studied physics and architectural history. After college, a stint with AmeriCorps introduced her to a kind of applied building science. “I had the opportunity to identify root causes and then make things better,” she says....

Shannon Goodman is the Executive Director of the Lifecycle Building Center in Atlanta, which has redirected nearly 13 million pounds of usable materials away from landfills and generated over $6 million in community savings, including 450 in-kind material grants to nonprofits. Shannon also serves as Board President for the nonprofit Build Reuse, representing reuse-focused organizations across the U.S. We talked to her about running a nonprofit and about the changes afoot in the AEC fiel...

Meghan Lewis is the Program Director of the Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF), where she leads strategy, research and resource development to execute CLF’s mission to eliminate embodied carbon in buildings, materials, and infrastructure to create a just and thriving future. Meghan joined CLF in 2020 to lead their efforts to inform public policies targeting embodied carbon, from Buy Clean to building codes and beyond. Previous to joining CLF, Meghan was an architect and launched a global sup...