From LEED to Decarbonization: Tanya Eagle's Blueprint for the Future of Sustainable Buildings

♻️ The Green Impact Report

Quick take: Tanya Eagle has spent her career proving that sustainability isn’t a “nice to have” — it’s a smarter way to design, operate, and future-proof buildings. In this episode, the LEED Fellow and JLL sustainability leader shares why the future of green building is bigger than certifications and how decarbonization, wellness, resilience, and material health are converging into one holistic strategy.

🙋 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion

With over sixteen years of experience leading sustainable design programs, Tanya is dedicated to sharing practical steps toward a sustainable future. Tanya is a Director on JLL’s Sustainable Building team, leading sustainability advisory services and solutions for diverse projects across the commercial real estate landscape.

Prior to JLL, Tanya was the Leader of Sustainability Standards at Perkins Eastman and worked at CallisonRTKL and GBCI. Tanya serves on the AIA Materials Pledge Working Group, the LEED MR TAG, the IWBI Materials Advisory, the Greenbuild Summit Working Group, and was a catalyst member of the mindful Materials AEC Forum.

Tanya has several publications and has spoken widely at leading industry forums such as Greenbuild, AIA Conference on Architecture & Design, NeoCon, AIA International, and Metropolis symposiums. Tanya is committed to achieving climate, wellness, and equity goals at scale in the built environment. Tanya is a LEED Fellow, a certified planner (AICP), an Associate member of AIA, and holds LEED AP BD+C and WELL AP credentials.

🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building

In this episode, Tanya Eagle explains how the Green Building Movement is evolving beyond checklists into holistic business strategy.

🧰 Key Insight #1: Sustainability succeeds when it’s integrated into business strategy — not treated like an add-on.

• The Challenge: Many organizations still approach sustainability as a disconnected initiative instead of embedding it into operations, portfolio planning, and long-term risk management.
• The Solution: Tanya works with clients at JLL to align carbon reduction, wellness, resilience, and operational goals into scalable sustainability roadmaps across entire portfolios — not just individual projects.
• ROI: Companies reduce operational risk, stay ahead of regulations, improve employee experience, and create long-term value while meeting decarbonization goals.

🧠 Key Insight #2: Healthy buildings and high-performance buildings are no longer separate conversations.

• The Challenge: For years, the industry treated wellness and sustainability like competing priorities, often assuming healthier spaces cost more or sacrificed performance.
• The Solution: Tanya highlighted projects like the John Lewis Elementary School in Washington, D.C. — a LEED Platinum, WELL Platinum, and Net Zero Energy-certified school — as proof that wellness and sustainability can work together.
• ROI: Better indoor environments improve occupant wellbeing while also delivering energy efficiency, operational savings, and long-term building performance.

🧰 Key Insight #3: The next wave of sustainability is about resilience, material health, and human-centered design.

• The Challenge: Many organizations focus narrowly on operational carbon while overlooking material impacts, climate resilience, and occupant health risks.
• The Solution: Tanya encourages teams to zoom out and think holistically — evaluating embodied carbon, material transparency, biodiversity, resilience, and human health together rather than in silos.
• ROI: Future-ready buildings are more resilient to climate risk, better aligned with emerging regulations, healthier for occupants, and more attractive to tenants and investors.

🎙️ Sustainable Soundbite

“Don’t try to be someone else in the room. Lean into your strengths, your perspective, and your passion — that’s where real leadership in sustainability begins.”— Tanya Eagle

👍 Your Green Building Action Plan

Transform your next project with these steps:

1. This Week: Align stakeholders around one clear sustainability goal before launching a project or initiative.
2. This Quarter: Identify one sustainability topic to deepen your expertise in — resilience, embodied carbon, wellness, or material health.
3. This Year: Build a holistic roadmap that connects sustainability goals to operational performance, business outcomes, and occupant wellbeing.

🔗 Connect & Learn More

🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast

🎧 Read the transcript 👉 here

👩🏻‍💻 Connect with Tanya:

• Website: https://www.us.jll.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanyaeagle/

💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.gbes.com/

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