Program

Sielen is a highly skilled Industry Executive and Board Director with 24 years of experience in driving global infrastructure and digital transformation Go-to-Market (GTM) sales strategy. As Cisco's Global Sustainability Lead for Industries, she oversees enablement of innovative sustainable solutions and strategic alliances to help customers in 12 industries including utilities, transportation, manufacturing, and financial services reach their Net Zero goals leveraging Cisco technology.

Prior to this role, she was Cisco's Global Digital Transportation and Water Lead, collaborating with teams and ecosystem partners to drive digital transformation of infrastructure, IoT technologies, and IT/Operations Technology (OT) convergence. She brought in-depth experience building innovative industry practices, GTM sales strategy and CXO level collaborations.

Sielen serves as Cisco's Diversity & Inclusion Lead for the Marketing organization and is highly adept in ESG. Prior to joining Cisco in 2018, she spent 20 years at Jacobs, as a Global Strategic Sales Director leading industry sector partnerships and facilitation of complex cross-business multidisciplinary teams to implement innovative and sustainable solutions for energy, water, and transportation customers. She also co-founded Jacobs’ Smart Cities Initiative in 2015, leading the global sales strategy.

She is a board member for Parametrix, a leading engineering, environmental, and planning company dedicated to creating vibrant and sustainable communities of the future. She is also a board member for Leadership Tomorrow (LT), a Seattle civic leadership organization focused on fostering healthy and resilient communities. Sielen served as the Partnership Chair for Smart Water Networks Forum (SWAN), a global organization dedicated to accelerating digital water, and received SWAN’s 'Outstanding Leadership' award. Sielen also served as a Membership Chair for WTS, an organization advancing women leadership in transportation, where she received the ‘Member of the Year’ award.

Sielen has completed the OnBoarding Women and University of Washington's Women Board Directors Development programs. She holds master's and bachelor's degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from University of Washington.

Lynn Simon, FAIA, LEED Fellow, brings more than 25 years of experience in climate, sustainability, and equity across tech, real estate, and AEC sectors. She recently joined Arup as a Principal and West Sustainability Services Leader based in San Francisco. Lynn was previously the Head of Sustainability for Real Estate and Workplace Services at Google and a Senior Vice President of Sustainability at Thornton Tomasetti, who acquired her own successful consulting firm. She has a diverse set of skills in developing client relationships, driving cross-functional programs into organizations, and building multi-disciplinary global teams with a focus on carbon, waste, water, health, and equity. Lynn has a bachelor’s degree in environmental design from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Architecture from the University of Washington. She is also a certified integral coach. Lynn serves on the Board of Directors for the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation and received the SHERO Leadership Award in 2020 from the USGBC Pacific Region.

Brenden is a recognized leader with 20 years of experience in built environment sustainability across public, private, and nonprofit sectors. At JLL, Brenden works with both Investors and Occupiers to decarbonize their real estate portfolios. Trained as an engineer, Brenden has deep technical expertise paired with broad experience in business strategy. Prior to joining JLL, Brenden led consulting work at Integral Group, the global leader in Net Zero Energy design engineering. At Integral, Brenden developed sustainable real estate strategy for 5 global technology companies and created the Equitable Climate Action Plan for one of the largest cities in California Previously, Brenden worked in the nonprofit sector. He led US Green Building Council’s operations across California, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii, leading program development, fundraising, and strategic partnerships. Before that, Brenden created the Urban Land Institute’s climate resilience and adaptation program. This program developed resources for real estate investors to prepare for and adapt to climate risk. Earlier in his career, Brenden led the Green Building Program at the City of Santa Monica. There he developed one of the first green building codes, that became the basis for the statewide CALGreen code that is used today.

Chris Magwood is obsessed with helping reverse climate change by making carbon-storing buildings that are also healthy, beautiful, efficient and inspiring. Chris has authored seven books on sustainable building, including Essential Sustainable Home Design (2017). He is co-editor of the Sustainable Building Essentials series from New Society Publishers, and recently, he contributed a chapter to the book The New Carbon Architecture.

In 1998 he co-founded Camel’s Back Construction, and over eight years helped to design and/or build more than 30 homes and commercial buildings, mostly with straw bales and often with renewable energy systems.

Chris has completed an MA at Trent University. His thesis, Opportunities for Carbon Removal and Storage in Building Materials which was published in the fall of 2019. Chris is an active speaker and workshop instructor in Canada and internationally.

Katie Hughes oversees the health and safety of Amazon’s global corporate portfolio. She started at Amazon in August of 2011. Katie’s goal is to ensure Amazon is the Earth’s Best (Safest) Employer, which requires monitoring regulatory changes that impact EHS, adjusting internal policies as required, and then ensuring team compliance. Katie drives new initiatives within the corporate space and ensures implementation. While most of EHS is tied to regulation, Katie firmly believes in going above and beyond to implement best practices to keep employees safe and healthy, as evidenced by her work to deploy the indoor air quality program. Katie helped lead the COVID-19 response on behalf of Amazon corporate, and received the Mary L McClinton Patient Safety Award (2022) for her work delivering COVID-19 vaccines to over 145k community members.

20 + years of City government policy and program experience, in City Council staff, public information specialist and program manager capacities.

Over ten years of experience providing racial equity training to build capacity for increasing racial justice in City government and in the community. In this capacity work extensively with cross-racial teams seeking to bring about institutional and structural change to create racial equity in the city of Seattle. In addition to training general audiences scope of work has a purposeful focus on bringing in strategies and perspectives that support People of Color in their leadership development and effectiveness.

Equity in educational opportunity has been a focus as a community activist and ultimately led to running for and serving a four year term on the Seattle Public School Board. This experience was among the most valuable personal challenges of moving from theory to action for racial equity.

In 2016 Darlene accepted the position of Director of the new Department of Race and Equity in Oakland California, where she is currently applying her years of experience public policy and equity expertise to lead and support Oakland’s efforts to create a more just and equitable City.

Christopher Cayten has more than 10 years of experience in building sustainability, architecture and real estate development in the U.S. and around the world. In addition to overseeing CodeGreen’s operations and business development, Cayten manages energy efficiency, LEED and corporate sustainability projects for portfolios and Fortune 500 companies. Cayten also works with state agencies and local utilities to develop and maximize financial incentives for energy efficiency upgrades. He is currently working with the NYC Mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning to develop and communicate the goals of the City’s ambitious energy efficiency legislation, The Greener, Greater Buildings Plan. This plan aims to reduce the carbon footprint of New York City buildings by more than 10% by 2030. He is an active member of the Urban Green Council, and serves on the sustainability committees of REBNY and BOMA-NY. Cayten holds a BA in architecture from Yale University and a Masters of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture.

Bringing 25 years of industry experience leading, managing, and consulting on a wide range of sustainability, green building, clean energy, and technology issues, Elaine is passionate about the power of multi-stakeholder alignment and helping people understand and respect the interconnectedness of our world. Elaine is currently focused on scaling up Third Derivative (D3) — a vertically-integrated global climate tech accelerator program founded by RMI and New Energy Nexus. D3 has been building an inclusive ecosystem to rapidly find, fund and scale climate tech innovation globally. By uniting and aligning committed investors, global corporates, and RMI's market, regulatory, and policy experts — all the stakeholders needed to bridge gaps faster — supported by financing and insights along the way, D3 increases the rate at which climate innovations can help us achieve a prosperous, equitable, and inclusive 1.5-degrees C world. Prior to joining the D3 leadership team, Elaine was widely recognized as the program director for VERGE at GreenBiz — the premier global event series focused on scaling solutions that bridge technology, sustainability, and systems-thinking across cities and industries. She has also had careers as a green building consultant, utility business strategist, engineer, and technologist. Elaine graduated from Duke University with a Master’s degree in engineering management and a Bachelor’s in biomedical engineering.

Philip is an engineer with an MBA and is on a mission to build the grid and transportation systems of the future. He has 14 years of experience in the utility and technology industries developing and managing products that include bleeding edge electric vehicle charging management programs, energy management and storage solutions, and industrial scale energy efficiency products. As Manager of Business Strategy and Operations within Panasonic’s Smart Mobility Office, Philip leads efforts to incubate and launch new products at the nexus of energy and mobility that will play a big role in Panasonic’s Green ImpACT goals.

Carlos is the Senior Industry Engagement Manager responsible for earning the participation and support of state and municipal policymakers, manufacturers, contractors, unions, and environmental justice advocates. Prior to this role, Carlos was Federal Policy Manager at Bloom Energy, responsible for advancing legislative, regulatory, and business development efforts before policymakers, legislators, regulators, trade associations and industry partners. Prior to Bloom, Carlos has over a decade of energy and climate change mitigation experience working at numerous organizations and institutions such as the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, Harvard University, Peace Corps, and Hudson Riverkeeper.

Janet Pogue McLaurin is a leader in Gensler’s global workplace practice areas and research initiatives. She is the Global Director Workplace Research which is one of six areas of focus within the Gensler Research Institute. Janet has been instrumental in leading Gensler’s award-winning workplace research advancing the science of workplace design as well as the WPIx client survey which measures space effectiveness, workplace experience, and what employees value on projects. An influential thought leader on the future of work, Janet shares her workplace expertise and research across the industry including CoreNet Global, IFMA World Workplace, ULI, Harvard LILA, SXSW, and WSJ Future of Everything; and with major media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, BBC, CNBC, CBS, NPR, Business Talk Radio, and Freakonomics.Janet, a Principal at Gensler, has spent four decades in both the Denver and Washington, DC offices. She co-founded Gensler’s Shanghai and Beijing offices and was Managing Director of the Denver office for over a decade. A registered Architect, she has served on the Gensler’s Board of Directors and currently serves on the Practice Area Management Committee for the firm. Janet was elevated to Fellow in the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) in 2017 and was recently elevated to The College of Fellows of The American Institute of Architects (AIA) for her notable contributions to the advancement of the profession of architecture.

With over 25 years of global experience in aligning strategy and execution, Johanna is a seasoned leader now working in the field of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy. As the Vice President of Professional Services at Measurabl, the world's leading ESG SaaS platform for real estate, she has built and continues to lead a fast-growing team of consultants who help clients set and act on their ESG data, goals, and reports.Johanna has broad expertise in global corporate real estate, including managing with direct P&L responsibility. She has worked with clients in various sectors, such as healthcare, technology, building systems, and government, providing innovation, location, and data strategy services. She holds a LEED AP credential and a Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. She is passionate about driving business towards the sustainable development goals and advising the Energy 2040 Commission on energy efficiency and a just energy transition.

Jon earned his BS in Chemistry from the University of St. Thomas and a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry from the University of California – San Diego. After graduate school, Jon joined Steelcase Inc. as their environmental chemist and eventually moved into a role as a leader in sustainable design and development. He joined Andersen Windows & Doors where he served as corporate sustainability manager and was responsible for product lifecycle assessments, material ingredient transparency, and preparing Andersen for a future in the circular economy. Jon is now the VP of Circularity and Senior Analyst at GreenBiz Group, a media and events company that works to accelerate the just transition to a clean economy.

Breana Wheeler became BRE's Director of Operations in the US in June 2016. BRE is a 100-year-old building science research organization focused on making buildings better for people and for the environment. BRE developed BREEAM, the world’s first and leading science-based suite of validation and certification systems for a sustainable built environment.Breana oversees the deployment of the BREEAM family of standards in the US, working national and international clients to scale their sustainability approach using the program. Additionally, she supports technical work on Resilience and Social Impact in BREEAM. Prior to joining BRE, Breana worked for ten years as an internal advisor on environmental and sustainability risk management for large, multinational corporations.