Workshop Co-Chairs
Jerome F. Hajjar
Jerome F. Hajjar, Ph.D., P.E., NAE, F.SEI, F.ASCE is the CDM Smith Professor, University Distinguished Professor, and Department Chair in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University. His research and teaching interests include analysis, experimental testing, and design of steel and composite steel/concrete building and bridge structures, regional modeling of infrastructure systems, and earthquake engineering, and he has published over 300 papers and authored or edited five books on these topics. He is the President of the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and is a member of the American Institute of Steel Construction Committee on Specifications. He was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2022 and has received several honors and awards. He is a registered professional engineer in Illinois and Minnesota.
Jennifer Goupil
Jennifer Goupil, P.E., F.SEI, F.ASCE, is the Chief Resilience Officer for the ASCE and Managing Director of SEI. With deep knowledge and experience in the buildings industry, Jennifer is a passionate leader with more than three decades of experience in advancing the profession of structural and civil engineering through standards development and adoptions, educational program creation and growth, and advocacy. Jennifer’s reputation for collaboration and consensus building, transparency, and effectiveness makes her a strong advocate and sought-after industry partner. Jennifer works tirelessly to advance resilient, sustainable, and performance-based design and is passionate about education and developing future leaders.
Workshop Speakers
Hon. Brendan Owens
The Honorable Brendan Owens was sworn in as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations, and Environment on January 26, 2023. In this role, he is the principal advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment for all matters relating to operational and facility energy; installations real property planning, operations, and sustainment; environment protection, compliance, and restoration; natural, historical and cultural resources; and accompanied and unaccompanied military housing. He oversees the Department of Defense’s real property portfolio encompassing millions of acres and over 500,000 buildings and structures at more than 500 installations, and additionally serves as the Chief Sustainability Officer and Chief Housing Officer for the Department of Defense. Prior to his appointment, Mr. Owens served as Principal of Black Vest Strategy, a consultancy focused on the intersection of health, equity, and climate issues in the built environment. He was also a co-founder of Ecountabl, Inc., a technology platform seeking to democratize access to corporate environmental, social, and governance information. Previously, Mr. Owens had a 19-year career with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). He is a Virginia-registered Professional Engineer and was honored as a LEED Fellow in 2012.
Jude Abel
Jude Abel is the Senior Manager for Sustainability and Innovation at Deloitte LLP. As a member of Deloitte LLP’s Sustainability, Climate and Equity practice, Jude Abel serves as the sustainability subject matter advisor for a team dedicated to developing innovative solutions to support clients’ net zero, nature positive pathways. She has held senior strategy, management and consulting roles for 20 years in the international conservation, environmental services and carbon markets sectors in the U.S., Hong Kong and New Zealand. Jude is particularly passionate about scaling conservation and climate finance as well as greening the built environment. She holds a B.A. In Politics from Princeton University and a Master in Environmental Management from the Yale School of the Environment.
Lance Davis
Lance Davis is the sustainability architect for a Federal Agency in Washington, DC where he leads the development of sustainable policy, performance, and tools. He has a Bachelors of Architecture from Mississippi State University where he is a Fellow. He is also a Fellow of the AIA and the USGBC. He chaired the LEED Steering Committee for the development of LEED v5 and was on the ASHRAE Decarbonization Task Force focusing on carbon sequestration. He is appointed to President Biden’s Climate Smart Infrastructure Working Group, co-authored Sustainability Matters and is featured in the book, The Rise of Living Architecture.
Torey Brooks
Torey Brooks is a structural engineer who started her career working on public and private projects throughout the Northeast. As a designer and sustainability coordinator she focused on meaningful embodied carbon reductions on projects, Whole Building LCA and corporate GHG accounting initiatives. Torey has been at the US EPA for over a year working to implement the embodied carbon provisions under the Inflation Reduction Act. This work is focused on construction materials and products and includes launching a grant program to improve EPDs, developing a carbon label program, and working alongside GSA and FHWA to use low carbon materials on federally funded projects. Torey is a member of the USGBC LEED Technical Advisory Group and the NCSEA sustainability committee, as well as teaching Green Building design as an adjunct professor at the University of New Hampshire. When Torey isn’t working on embodied carbon, she can be found enjoying the mountains, lakes and oceans in her home state of New Hampshire.
Matthew Eckelman
Matthew Eckelman is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University. His research group uses life cycle assessment, process simulation, and energy system modeling to understand large-scale environmental impacts of materials and the built environment. Dr. Eckelman worked previously for the Massachusetts State Executive Office of Environmental Affairs and in the manufacturing and construction sectors. He received international Laudise Prize in Industrial Ecology in 2013 and the Clemens Herschel research award from the Boston Society of Civil Engineers in 2017, and holds a doctorate in Chemical and Environmental Engineering from Yale University.
Kena David
Kena David serves as Director of Sustainability at Consigli Construction Co., Inc., a leading construction manager in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. She leads the development and implementation of comprehensive sustainability strategies on Consigli’s projects, building on the firm’s proven track record of delivering innovative green building solutions for clients across market sectors. With more than a decade of diverse sustainable building experience, Kena David has successfully led sustainability efforts for large, complex projects and has wide-ranging expertise in ESG initiatives. The recipient of various industry awards she is a LEED AP, ID+C WELL AP and Fitwel Ambassador and WELL Faculty.
Benjamin Schafer
Benjamin Schafer, Ph.D., P.E., F.SEI is the Hackerman Professor of Civil and Systems Engineering and the Director of the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is an active volunteer and leader on multiple national committees related to engineering and design of steel structures.
Brandon Williams
Product Success Manager at Sublime, Brandon collaborates closely with designers and builders to validate our technology and educate and build trust in Sublime materials across the construction value chain. Brandon has over ten years of experience working in the concrete industry as a Lab Technician, Project Manager, Plant Manager, Quality Assurance Supervisor, and Senior Project Engineer for several leading companies in California and Hawaii.
Max Puchtel
Max Puchtel is the Director of Sustainability and Government Relations for the American Institute of Steel Construction, and he works to see a world in which the U.S. is a global leader in decarbonized structural steel. Max often represents the structural steel community on state and federal government affairs, including Buy American policies, trade, transportation funding, and Buy Clean legislation. He leads many of AISC’s sustainability efforts, including the development and publication of three industry-wide EPDs for structural steel. He is active in many professional, standards, and industry groups, including the Structural Engineering Institute, National Council of Structural Engineering Associations, Association for Iron and Steel Technology, American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, and Green Globes Consensus Bodies. Max holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Illinois Tech, and he is a licensed structural & professional engineer.
Jennifer Shakun
Jennifer’s areas of expertise include the science of climate change impacts on forest ecosystems, climate-smart approaches to forest management, and the use of wood for lower-carbon building construction. She leads New England Forestry Foundation’s work to develop a regional forest bioeconomy that benefits communities, our climate, and our forests. This includes deep engagement with partners in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry, particularly around the development of sustainably-sourced mass timber construction. Jennifer has dual master’s degrees in Forestry and Environmental Management from Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, and she is an SAF Certified Forester.
Workshop Steering Committee Members and Breakout Session Leaders
Jay Arehart
Jay Arehart is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering department at the University of Colorado Boulder and co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Preoptima, a software company that manages and mitigates the embodied carbon of buildings. Trained as an architectural engineer, Jay worked as a structural designer prior to completing his PhD investigating the carbon storage potential of materials and buildings. Jay currently teaches courses with a focus on architectural design, structural engineering, building science, and sustainability. Jay is a co-chair of the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) Sustainability Committee and representative of the Academic Council of the Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI).
Don Davies, P.E., S.E.
Don Davies is the Co-Founder and Principal at Davies-Crooks Associates. An industry champion for the promotion of urban density and lower-carbon construction and a 2023 ENR top 25 news maker, Don helped found the Carbon Leadership Forum, Building Transparency, and the MKA Foundation. He is a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council, and has been inducted into the UC Berkeley Academy of Distinguished Alumni. The past president of Magnusson Klemencic Associates, his structurally designed projects are in 18 countries and more than 50 major metropolitan centers. More than 25 are Performance Based Seismic Designed towers.
Michael Gryniuk
Michael Gryniuk is the Founder and Principal of CORA Structural, a full-service structural engineering firm based in Boston. With over 23 years of industry experience, his firm aims to design cost-effective solutions with a focus on design outcomes and structural systems that minimize material usage and reduce embodied carbon. Renowned for his passion and leadership in the structural engineering profession, he co-founded and serves as Chair of SE 2050 and recently advised the White House Office Climate Policy Office on Embodied Carbon. In 2024, Michael received the Structural Engineering Institute’s President’s Award for his leadership in advocating for sustainability and net-zero embodied carbon construction in the structural engineering profession.
Dirk Kestner
Dirk Kestner is a Senior Principal and corporate Director of Sustainable Design for Walter P Moore, a global structural and enclosure engineering firm. His current practice includes structural design with a focus on Whole Building Lifecycle Assessment to minimize embodied impacts. He was the founding chairman of the Sustainability Committee for The Structural Engineering Institute and served as an editor of the committee’s book Sustainability Guidelines for the Structural Engineer. He is a current advisory board member of The Carbon Leadership Forum and a past chair of the USGBC Materials and Resources Technical Advisory Group. Dirk is a licensed Professional and Structural Engineer and is a LEED AP BD+C and Envision SP.
Elaina Sutley
Elaina Sutley is the Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, and an Associate Professor in Structural Engineering at the University of Kansas. Her research uses field-based, experimental, and computational approaches to advance equity during and after disasters. Dr. Sutley has received early career awards from the National Science Foundation and from the National Academies supporting her research. Dr. Sutley currently serves on the American Society of Civil Engineer’s Infrastructure Resilience Division Executive Committee, the Structural Engineering Institute’s Board of Governors, and the Applied Technology Council’s Board of Direction. Dr. Sutley is a licensed Professional Engineer in Kansas and a LEED AP Homes.
Mark D. Webster
Mark D. Webster is a structural engineer at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger’s Boston area office. He is a founder and past co-chair of the Structural Engineering Institute’s Sustainability Committee. He is part of the leadership team for the SE 2050 Commitment and co-leads the SE 2050 Resources Group. He edited and co-authored the SEI Sustainability Committee’s technical report addressing the climate impacts of structural materials, Structural Materials and Global Climate and the committee’s white paper entitled Achieving Net Zero Embodied Carbon in Structural Materials by 2050. His structural consulting practice encompasses new design, renovation, and investigation work, with an emphasis on historic buildings.