News Brief

New Leadership, New Strategy for U.S. Green Building Council

Peter Templeton, a former USGBC and GBCI executive, will steer the organizations through a strategic review as interim CEO and president.

Peter Templeton

Peter Templeton

Photo: U.S. Green Building Council
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) recently announced the imminent departure of Mahesh Ramanujam as president and CEO of the organization as well as Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI) and Arc Skoru. We spoke with Ramanujam’s interim successor, Peter Templeton, about the future of the organizations, including the strategic review that was announced along with the leadership transition.

Twenty years of commitment

“I’ve spent over two decades at this point working on green building and with USGBC, and I care deeply about the future of this movement and the future of the organization—and I think those are closely tied,” said Templeton, formerly a senior vice president with USGBC and the first president of GBCI.

Templeton is currently president and CEO of the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute (C2CPII), which develops the C2C product standard. In that role, he has worked intensively with the manufacturing stakeholders that are part of the movement and learned to “understand down to the molecule what it is that we’re really working with in our buildings and communities, and how those impacts accumulate.” He will carry these relationships and insights forward into his work with USGBC.

Reconnecting with the community

Templeton told BuildingGreen he’s particularly keen to “connect back with the community” as part of the upcoming strategic review. “We want to hear where it is that we need to focus our attention and our team, and invest our efforts moving forward,” he said. This is important to “making sure that LEED is still functioning as the framework and the tool that people need to achieve their priorities and objectives.”

The board of directors is undertaking the strategic review with “a very sincere effort,” Templeton continued. He alluded to three “pillars” of the review: leadership and structure, ties within the community, and internal culture. Technology platforms are also a priority, he added. “There are some immediate needs.”

In completing the review, Templeton emphasized the importance of collaborating with partner organizations in order to “have input coming from different channels that aren’t just the USGBC doors that we open.”

Templeton will take the reins November 1, 2021.

For more information:

U.S. Green Building Council
usgbc.org

 

Published September 17, 2021

Melton, P. (2021, September 17). New Leadership, New Strategy for U.S. Green Building Council. Retrieved from https://www.buildinggreen.com/newsbrief/new-leadership-new-strategy-us-green-building-council

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Comments

September 20, 2021 - 3:28 pm

Hi Peter,

I have known you for 20 years now and I am grateful that you are willing (and very capable) to lead us all through this important step in our movement.

Thank you from all of us at Re:Vision and from me personally.

Scott Kelly, LEED Fellow

September 22, 2021 - 2:38 pm

Let me add my voice of deep appreciation of what USGBC has accomplished in the short time span of 20 years and the outsize impact that has fundamentally transformed the built environment.  As pioneer and path-finder organization, USGBC through the successive leadership has achieved amazing results.  Facing with the accelerating deterioration due to climate change, the green building community must strive in forward.  Dr. Charles Handy famously illustsrate the challenge of USGBC now faces in his critically accalaimed Sigmoid Curve.  We wish USGBC well and will continue to support its transformative leadership!

Paul Tseng, PE, LEED Fellow