New Research, Buildings Reinvented – Erin McLaughlin, The Conference Board
Release Date: 07/22/2024
88% of Companies Say Sustainability Creates Long-Term Value – Maura Hodge, KPMG Chief Sustainability Officer
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“There is value in being able to articulate the qualitative value of sustainability…And yes, obviously revenues can be attached to that, but obviously just the opportunity to open up new markets more broadly and innovate…There's the risk and compliance component, which tend to be more easy to actually quantify. And then there's the brand reputation…So you can make the case qualitatively in any of those three areas…There's this movement from morality to materiality now that CFOs are involved…We actually take that all the way to the financial statements, to the balance sheet, to the...
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Microgrids Keep The Lights On, For Less – Jana Gerber, President of Microgrids, Schneider Electric
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“What is a microgrid?...There's a lot of challenges that folks are dealing with around the grid infrastructure, with weather related challenges and load growth and other elements. And so what a microgrid does is help those customers become not only consumers of energy, but also producers of energy. So we like to call that a prosumer….So a microgrid helps to create that bridge between the building and the big grid…So if the grid's no longer there (e.g., an outage), they can act independently of the grid. It also helps with deploying more renewables on their sites, as well as really...
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How To Talk About Climate In A Polarized Culture – Katharine Hayhoe, Climate Scientist, Professor at Texas Tech University & Chief Scientist at The Nature Conservancy
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“We have to begin our conversations with what really matters to the person or people we're speaking with. And if we don't know what that is, we have to get to know them and build a relationship and then start the conversation where they're at…The second common misconception I see is that we have to load up our wheelbarrow with the biggest load of scary facts we can possibly find and just dump it on people because not enough people are worried about this.…But if we haven't connected the head to the heart, my life, the places I love, the people I love, the things I love my home, the price...
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Critical Minerals 101 – Abby Wulf, Critical Minerals Expert, Former Head of Critical Minerals at the Dept. Of Energy, & Center for Critical Minerals Strategy
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“Critical minerals and materials…are essential for key economic and national security technologies that help to fuel great sectors in the United States and around the world…We're at a very interesting point in the United States for critical minerals and materials because the US Geological Survey… just released their draft version of their newly updated critical minerals list…(But) they're very difficult to come by. And for a lot of these materials, they are mined as byproducts and co-products. They're used in incredibly low volumes, and so it's very difficult for companies to sort of...
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Mobilizing Women’s Influence – Paula Noble Fellingham
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
"People care about the diversity because diversity makes teams stronger. And, and this is research based. And so they can say what they want, but those who know that there is strength in diversity, they'll continue on in spite of the, you know, the outcry on the other end….There's research that shows that when the lives of billions of women are improved, here's what happens. Number one, there's better female leadership. Number two, there's stronger education and more equality with women and girls. There's healthier national economies. There's research. …There's stronger families and my...
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A Creative Leverage For Good – Kate Williams, 1% For The Planet
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“1% for the planet…the way it works is that we have businesses who are our members, and they're actually supporting environmental partners at the level of 1% of revenues….You invest in the things that matter and the planet matters.…(to) drive impact at scale. And so, in terms of that scale, last year we certified US$100million of support going from these companies to environmental partners….When a company joins, they pay a dues fee to us, but then the rest of their 1%, they will give directly to environmental partners….And then at the end of each year, we certify that giving.” ...
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How Design & Tech Are Transforming Cities – Nikki Greenberg, Real Estate of the Future, from Smart City Expo World Congress 2025
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“(B)efore we're even thinking about AI, it's actually thinking about how are we using our technology effectively and is it part of our processes? Does it complicate things or does it simplify things? And the advice that I always give them is like, before you start bringing in new technology and new processes and having to train people and doing their job in a different way and adding complication first, look at what you're doing and…pair back the stuff that doesn't need to be there anymore. And then think about technology.” Nikki Greenberg on Electric Ladies Podcast Cities are in...
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What’s a ‘Tech Humanist’? – Kate O’Neill, CEO of KO Insights at Smart City Expo World Congress 2025
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“One of the other important things about tech humanism to me is that the three-way relationship between business humans and tech is primarily about the relationship between business objectives and human outcomes and using technological capability to amplify that alignment, as opposed to using technology to amplify only the business objective side of that relationship. So really trying to think about how does a business meet the humans that it serves, and then how can technology be part of making that more effective and more successful so the business can succeed and the humans can have a...
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Unique Practical Urban Climate Actions – Joan’s Panel of International City Innovators from Smart City Expo World Congress 2025
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
The World Bank reports that, “today, more than half of the world’s population – over 4 billion people – lives in cities.” It also estimates that this shift is going to continue, in fact to DOUBLE to nearly 70% – or 7 out of every 10 people will live in cities by 2050. That’s only 25 years away. At the same time, extreme weather events are increasingly devastating cities – we have all witnesses how Hurricane Melissa decimated Jamaica last week, for example, destroying home and businesses, schools, houses of worship, government buildings, everything. So what can, should...
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Career Advice For Difficult Times From 5 Women Leaders
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“Your job isn’t to know the answer. Your job is to ask all the right questions of where the business is going and…Don’t be afraid…(Align) with people who could see the possibility of (your) experience…Take that stretch job and just remember you’re in the room to ask different questions, and that’s perfectly fine. So, take the stretch and then lean into your experience that allows you to have a different lens and a different perspective.” , Chief Sustainability Officer at Workiva on Electric Ladies Podcast When the economy feels tough or you feel like things are...
info_outline“I think we are really at an inflection point for a couple different reasons, the first being climate change and the fact that buildings are the cause of so much carbon emissions…(T)he second one, as you sort of referred to is the pandemic, and our intersection with how we use our residential and commercial buildings is different…(and) we also have to acknowledge the expense and the financing costs around some of the changes that we are seeing underway and what that may mean.” Erin McLaughlin on Electric Ladies Podcast
Multiple forces are transforming our buildings at once: how and where we work, climate change, reporting and financing structures, and even the materials we use to build those homes and commercial buildings. So, where are we?
Listen to Erin McLaughlin, Senior Economist at The Conference Board, explain the trends from their recent research in this fascinating discussion with Electric Ladies host Joan Michelson. She also shares insightful career advice.
You’ll hear about:
- The inflection point that our buildings and homes face today, and why it’s unique in history.
- What is changing as a result of these dynamics, in every aspect of buildings, from materials, to processes, to financing, to who uses them and how.
- The key role that mitigating climate change plays in where we live, play and work.
- Plus, insightful career advice, such as…
“Careers don't always go up, right? You shouldn't necessarily think of your career as, oh, I got promoted to the next position up and now I manage more people, or I manage a bigger budget. You should think of them like climbing a, a rock wall. Like sometimes you have to go sideways in order to go up… and to deepen your skillset and, also watch the trends and watch the policies and…thinking about how they'll impact your career.” Erin McLaughlin on Electric Ladies Podcast
Read Joan’s Forbes articles here.
You'll also like:
- Katie McGinty, Chief Sustainability Officer, Johnson Controls, on the power of building.
- Anna Siefken, Deputy Director, Federal Energy Management Program, Dept. of Energy, on how the federal government reduces the energy use and carbon footprint of its 350,000 buildings.
- Rachel McCleery, Senior Advisor, Treasury Dept. Inflation Reduction Act Program, on how to leverage the IRA to save money reducing a building or business’s energy use and carbon footprint.
- Rachel Frazin, Environment & Energy Reporter at The Hill, on Project 2025 and climate change.
- Laura Busse Dolan, CEO, Applied Imagination, which designs and builds miniature buildings from plants and botanicals.
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