Description of Individual or organization
Amy King, LEED Green Associate, is the cofounder of GoodWork, an innovative coworking community expected to open in late 2016. It is the anchor tenant and social engine of 1808, a mixed-use building that is on track to become the world’s first WELL-certified coworking space and one of the first LEED-certified spaces in the USA.
Leadership (Nominee demonstrates leadership through example, knowledge, attitude)
Amy is a sustainability leader of extraordinary capability and dedication. She is also a visionary professional. She understands that we no longer exist in an 8-5 culture. We must fit work into our life and life into our work. Furthermore, a healthy and flexible work environment is necessary for sustainable growth. Her organization GoodWork champions the triple bottom line approach to business, with equal emphasis on people, planet, and profit.
Through GoodWork, Amy is cultivating a community that supports sustainable organizations and a culture that values human impact to solve resource scarcity and sustainability challenges.
Amy also walks the walk in her personal life by living sustainably in her Energy Star Certified Home, tending to backyard chickens, composting and helping her fiancé Gary Olp with the beehives. You can find her dumpster diving if people forget to recycle at an event and bringing her glass water bottle wherever she goes.
• Contribution to the national conversation around advancing greening the built environment, resiliency, and triple bottom line business.
• Started USGBC Leadership Institute for USGBC staff – programmed over 80 leadership development sessions
• Supervised first USGBC national staff person placed in New Orleans, LA post-Katrina to support the Recovery School District in major green schools initiative and community advancement and adoption of sustainability initiatives in the Lower Ninth Ward.
• Oversaw the first USGBC Natural Talent Design Competition that was design-build, cultivated partnership with Salvation Army of Greater New Orleans and the Broadmoor Development Corporation, and a nationally prestigious jury to review and select six projects (3 student, 3 young professional) to be built in the recovering post-Katrina Broadmoor neighborhood. The designs were for LEED Platinum, 800 square feet affordable homes. All homes are now occupied.
• Served on the Historic Green board of directors, a Kansas City and New Orleans-based non-profit committed to rebuilding economically depressed or disaster-affected historic neighborhoods using a blend of green building techniques and historic preservation.
• Served on Advisory Committee for 8 years for the national Envrionmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital
Environmental Impact (Nominee demonstrates a positive impact on the local environment via policy change, product offering, significant volunteer contribution or other achievement)
Amy’s early exposure to the national USGBC and the LEED rating system has helped her bring her perspective and broader experience to create a cultural shift in the city of Dallas, especially in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The LEED rating system is a global standard for green buildings that ensures accountability and state-of-the-art sustainability practices in building design and construction, positively impacting the city and global carbon footprint and human health.
Among her accomplishments with LEED, Amy is:
• Significantly lowering the carbon footprint of GoodWork, a 50k sf building, and positively impacting the human health of its 400+ members, tenants and customers.
• Encouraging bicycle and public transportation usage and energy conservation by building occupants.
• Including features such that benefit the environment and positively impact human health, such as: building reuse in maintaining existing walls, floors and roof and reused salvaged materials; making smart choices for non-toxic building materials and furnishings; developing green cleaning plan; using green power; and actively preventing construction activity pollution and light pollution
• Prior to her work with this project, Amy supported several large green building projects pursuing LEED Certification in first year of residence in Dallas – including Forest Park Medical Center, BBVA Compass Houston and McClennan Community College buildings, and High Pointe Tennis Center at Baylor University.
Community Impact (Nominee demonstrates commitment to DFW green community through involvement with causes, business ventures or organizations)
• Developing film on Gary and his beekeeping with Saltbox Films
• Getting involved in Conscious Capitalism DFW chapter
• Amy has served as an advisor to GreenSource DFW for the last 5 years
• Speaks regularly to the entrepreneurial and business communities in DFW and beyond about Naked Brands – the push for transparent brands seeking to do better for their stakeholders and the planet. Speaking engagements include DCCCD Sustainability Summit 2015, The Grove Dallas Sustainability Events, GreenBuild Conference 2015 – delivered TED/ Moth Radio style talk to 300 people on personal sustainability and the sustainability movement.
• Works with branding clients to be more intentional about focusing on the triple bottom line. Her clients include LOFTwall, Brand Capital Partners, Workplace Transformation Facilitation
• Strong social media presence celebrating and promoting sustainability and triple bottom line in DFW and beyond (@nestedstrategy & @nestedallas)
Other reasons for your nomination
• Led the American Film Institute to green their documentary festival SILVERDOCS (now AFI Docs) in partnership with Discovery Channel, resulting in the festival being the first carbon-neutral documentary festival in North America. Discovery Channel proudly leveraged this achievement as one of their first corporate environmental efforts.
• Participated in a global consortium of documentary filmmakers seeking to green the documentary film industry, and influence the film industry at large.
• Worked to ensure the continued growth and development of the USGBC chapter network and its leadership by producing a robust leadership development program, award, grant and partnership opportunities, high-level coaching and ongoing Web and on-site training programs for chapters in various stages of development. Her job was also to ensure that the Chapter Leader Development Program effectively addressed the diverse needs of USGBC's chapter leaders.
• Accomplishments:
• Cultivated a collaborative and transparent partnership between the USGBC national office and chapters.
• Improved communication and brand messaging alignment between local organizations and national office.
• Led diversity and inclusion working group to conduct research and develop strategy around volunteer community engagement and inclusion across the US.
• Developed partnerships with the Salvation Army, Girls Scouts of the USA and Architecture for Humanity to promote green schools and sustainable communities.
