Professor Katharine Hayhoe is The Nature Conservancy’s Chief Scientist and 2019 United Nations Champion of the Earth award winner. In addition to being a highly sought-after speaker, she is also director of the Climate Center, an associate in the Public Health program of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Texas Tech University, a principal investigator for the Department of Interior’s South-Central Climate Adaptation Science Center, the founder and CEO of ATMOS Research, a scientific advisor to 5 organizations and a television show producer.

Mike Collignon is the Executive Director of the Green Builder® Coalition, an organization he co-founded in 2010. He engages in national and state-level advocacy and publishes regular content for Green Builder® Media. Mike is also the Chair of the WERS Development Group and the Co-Chair of the Next Generation Water Summit. Finally, he has served as the voice of Green Builder® Media’s online and in-person events from 2012–present.

Bill McDonnell is the Manager of Water Efficiency for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. His team manages conservation programs for commercial, industrial, institutional and residential consumers covering MWD service area of 19 million
people. Bill has more than 40 years’ experience in both water and energy efficiency. He is on the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Water Efficiency, the California Water Efficiency Partnership and the California Irrigation Institute. Bill has a BA from the University of Massachusetts and an MBA from University of La Verne.

Deirdre Irwin is the Water Conservation Coordinator for the St. Johns River Water Management District. With over 29 years of experience at the District, she has worked with the agency’s surface water regulatory program, water resource education program, certification program development and water supply planning. Her work as the Florida Water StarSM Coordinator and Water Conservation Coordinator involves administering the Florida Water Star program and assisting with training and outreach for the program. Deirdre works closely with District staff in the development of regional water supply plans and coordinates a utility water conservation group that meets quarterly.

Deirdre serves on the board for the Florida Green Building Coalition and on the statewide Florida-Friendly Landscaping Advisory Committee. Deirdre serves as chair of the Water Use
Efficiency Division for the Florida Section of the AWWA.

Frantz is the Head of R&D, Sustainable Innovation at Procter & Gamble (P&G), a multinational FMCG serving 5+ billion consumers in the world . With more than 20 years of experience at P&G R&D, Frantz is a passionate Innovation Leader with high sustained track-record across multiple categories and P&G and big iconic brands like Tide, Ariel, Swiffer, Mr. Clean.  Frantz’ obsession is to “Make Sustainable Irresistible” to accelerate fastest adoption of sustainable solutions in the face of the climate urgency.  This is what inspired him to invent and now spearhead the 50LH Coalition behind a simple question: “What if our future Homes could run at 50L water per day per person, yet “feel like” 500L”.

J.R. Robinson is a west-coast based filmmaker and photographer with a passion for the American Southwest. His directing work on short film projects has been featured at numerous film festivals around the country, where they have won multiple awards. He is an alumnus of Chapman University’s prestigious Dodge College Graduate Film Program, where his thesis film, New World Water, took a narrative approach to tackling the water issues facing the West. His professional resume includes work in the production departments on over a dozen large television and film productions, including True Blood, The Dark Knight Rises, and Jane the Virgin, to name a few. Over the past five years, he has been operating as a freelance still photographer, exploring, shooting, and selling wall art prints through his photography company, Datura Photography. With Blood of the West, he is making a return to motion picture storytelling, marrying his passions for photography with his deep love of the Southwest, and a desire to protect the landscape that has provided so much artistic inspiration for him over the past decade.

Doug is a lifetime American Rainwater Catchment System Association (ARCSA) member, an Accredited Professional and an ex-Board member of ARCSA. He is a prolific writer and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, Water Efficiency Magazine, Home Power, Taos News and Water News, among others. He also has a regular monthly column in the Santa Fe New Mexican. He is co-author of two water studies that have been widely published: “Rainwater Harvesting Industry Market Size and Trends” and “First-Ever Long-Term Water Conservation Rebate Study”.

Doug is an EPA WaterSense Partner with Certification in Irrigation Auditing. He is an active member of the City of Santa Fe Water Conservation Committee. He is currently a member of the International Code Committee (ICC) working group that is drafting the ICC Rainwater Harvesting Building Codes. Doug is also a certified Permaculture Designer. Doug designs and consults on rainwater and water reuse systems locally and around the country.

Darrel McMaster is the CEO of Sustainable Homes, Inc. and a Master Builder. Sustainable Homes is a National Leader in building homes that generate all of their utility needs from the environment. They have recently completed their first Generation 6 home, a home that is being called Net Zero Carbon.  All utilities for the home are generated on site including powering the owner’s electric vehicle. It is their 114th home that uses rainwater for all domestic water needs. Mr. McMaster speaks all over the country at Energy Fairs, Water Conferences and the National Irrigator Convention.

Kim Shanahan has been a green builder in Santa Fe, New Mexico since 1986 and a residential sustainability consultant since 2018. From 2008 to 2018 he was the executive officer of the Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association where he established the local chapter as one of the most sustainability-focused in the national federation.  He successfully introduced and help shepherd approval of Santa Fe's Water Efficiency Rating Score (WERS)® into the 2020 National Green Building Standard where it was revised to become the non-proprietary national Water Rating Index.

Mike Collignon is the Executive Director of the Green Builder® Coalition, an organization he co-founded in 2010. He engages in national and state-level advocacy and publishes regular content for Green Builder® Media. Mike is also the Chair of the WERS Development Group and the Co-Chair of the Next Generation Water Summit. Finally, he has served as the voice of Green Builder® Media’s online and in-person events from 2012–present.

Gary Klein, President of Gary Klein & Associates, Inc. has been intimately involved in energy efficiency and renewable energy since 1974. One fifth of his career was spent in the Kingdom of Lesotho, the rest in the United States. Mr. Klein has a passion for hot water: getting into it, getting out of it and efficiently delivering it to meet customer's needs. After serving 19 years with the
California Energy Commission, he has provided consulting on sustainability since 2008, with an emphasis on the water-energy-carbon connection. Mr. Klein received a BA from Cornell University in 1975 with an Independent Major in Technology and Society with an emphasis on energy conservation and renewable energy.

The International Association of Plumber and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO) recognized his efforts in 2014 presenting him their Green Professional of the Year award. In 2015 the Department of Energy awarded him the Jeffrey A. Johnson Award for Excellence in in the Advancement of Building Energy Codes.

Laureen holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in architecture from the University of Illinois and is a licensed architect in Illinois & Wisconsin as well as having received approval for reciprocal licensure across the country via NCARB certification. She has also built a successful 30-year+ practice in the design and construction of commercial buildings, multi-family projects, single family homes, and interiors. Additional experience includes ratings, inspections, and certification application processing for a variety of commercial & residential properties through LEED BD+C, LEED ID+C, LEED for Homes & LEED for Homes Mid-Rise, Energy Star Homes & Energy Star Multifamily High Rise, Enterprise Green Communities, and the WERS (Water Efficiency Rating Score).

Other accreditations & certifications include USGBC LEED® for Homes QAD, RESnet/HERS Energy Rater, LEED for Homes Green Rater, LEED AP BD+C, LEED AP HOMES, USGBC LEED® Faculty™, and WERS Faculty & Verifier.

Once we build a very high-performance building from the perspective of heating, cooling and ventilation and install high efficiency lighting and plug loads, we are left with what to do about (hot) water. Hot water is a system: heater, distribution piping, plumbing fixtures and appliances, waste heat that runs down the drain. Cold water is a system, too. Overlay occupant behavior and then change technologies from what we are used to. To top it off, the way most of us were taught to design hot water systems is based on information that is more than 50 years out of date. This session will present practical measures you can incorporate into your next project that result in high performance (hot) water systems and very satisfied customers.

Bonus - How does all this help you do better in Green Building and LEED for Homes?

Laureen holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in architecture from the University of
Illinois and is a licensed architect in Illinois & Wisconsin as well as having received approval for reciprocal licensure across the country via NCARB certification. She has also built a successful 30-year+ practice in the design and construction of commercial buildings, multi-family projects, single family homes, and interiors. Additional experience includes ratings, inspections, and certification application processing for a variety of commercial &
residential properties through LEED BD+C, LEED ID+C, LEED for Homes & LEED
for Homes Mid-Rise, Energy Star Homes & Energy Star Multifamily High Rise, Enterprise Green Communities, and the WERS (Water Efficiency Rating Score).

Other accreditations & certifications include USGBC LEED® for Homes QAD, RESnet/HERS Energy Rater, LEED for Homes Green Rater, LEED AP BD+C, LEED AP HOMES, USGBC LEED® Faculty™, and WERS Faculty & Verifier.

Ms. Mortimer launched a climate change and sustainability consulting business, Pax Consulting, after leaving the position of Sustainability Officer at the City of Santa Fe, NM in order to assist local governments and other organizations develop and implement effective, measurable and equitable climate change action and resiliency plans. She has a Bachelor of Architecture from the California College of the Arts and a Master of Environmental Planning from the University of California at Berkeley.

Raised in Breckenridge, Colorado and migrated to the Santa Fe area in the early 90’s, Miles is a product of the American West. He lives in Rio en Medio with a view of the Pojoaque Valley that will not quit, alongside his wife of 23 years, Mikahla Beutler and son, Tilman.

Prior to serving as executive officer for the Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association, Miles had a long career with New Mexico Labor unions, serving as a communications professional, organizer, and political coordinator for both the public sector, and the professional trades union locals. Most recently, he was a fundraising and communications coordinator at New Energy Economy, working to bring the Santa Fe community greater accessibility to local renewable energy resources.

Along with a tech savvy know-how, Miles brings his relationship building skills to the Association and is enthusiastically incorporating bold new ideas into the association’s already robust presence in the community.

In March 2017, the City of Santa Fe enacted an innovative, performance-based water efficiency code requirement for all new single-family residences. After 3 years, they wanted to know if their code was having the desired effect: driving water use down. As the owner of the water utility, the city has access to water use data for not only pre-code, unrated homes, but current water use data for all homes. In the process of analyzing the water efficiency rating system, Santa Fe’s land use planners and sustainability team were prompted to use the data to learn more about water use patterns. Find out what the data has indicated about the effectiveness of the water efficiency ratings, the changes in water usage over the first 3 years in a new home, the accuracy of the water ratings’ water use projections, and the lessons learned about using a performance based water efficiency rating system.

Kim Shanahan will lead a discussion with Cindy Wasser and Craig Connor on how the Water Rating Index (WRI) was established in the 2020 National Green Building Standard and how it can be used by water jurisdictions facing pressures of growth with limited and declining allocations of water. You can't manage what you're not measuring, especially new residential growth. The WRI is a predictive water-usage calculation tool based on a zero to 100 scale with zero being net zero water usage. The index can calculate projected gallons of annual usage and can predict how many new homes can be sustained by an acre foot of available water.

Cindy Wasser, MBA is the Senior Manager of Green Building Programs at Home Innovation Research Labs. In this role, she provides strategic support to the NGBS Green Certification program, and her efforts have contributed to the program becoming the leading green building certification program for residential construction. Cindy leads the development of new program features and tools that are utilized by verifiers and developers seeking green certification. In 2020, Cindy was recognized by Professional Builder magazine as a 40-under-40 rising star in the homebuilding industry.

Previously, Cindy was a consultant with ICF where she supported the implementation of the U.S. EPA’s residential labeling programs, namely ENERGY STAR, Indoor airPLUS, and WaterSense. In earlier roles, Cindy provided sustainability technical assistance at the National Association of Counties (NACo) and led community engagement efforts for the City Planning Department of Montpelier, Vermont. Cindy holds an MBA in Sustainability from Bard College and a B.S. in U.S. Environmental Policy and from Rutgers University.

Craig Connor is a national energy codes expert with a long history of working with the National Association of Home Builders on energy code developments. As a western Washington resident, he saw the relevance of a national Water Rating Index and shepherded the transition of Santa Fe's WERS program to become the WRI through the ANSI consensus process that established the 2020 National Green Building Standard.

Kim Shanahan has been a green builder in Santa Fe, New Mexico since 1986 and a residential sustainability consultant since 2018. From 2008 to 2018 he was the executive officer of the Santa Fe Area Home Builders Association where he established the local chapter as one of the most sustainability-focused in the national federation.  He successfully introduced and help shepherd approval of Santa Fe's Water Efficiency Rating Score (WERS)® into the 2020 National Green Building Standard where it was revised to become the non-proprietary national Water Rating Index.

Friday Keynote

Melanie Stansbury is a Candidate for Congress and State Legislator, proudly representing New Mexico’s 28th District in the New Mexico State House of Representatives. Professionally Melanie works as a consultant and senior advisor to non-profit, philanthropic, and research organizations on strategies to help build a more sustainable world—with a focus on water security, natural resources, and community development. A sociologist by training, with a background in the natural sciences, Melanie has worked across the U.S. with federal, tribal, state, and local organizations, including as staff in the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the Office of Management and Budget.

Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández represents New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District. In Washington, she holds a leadership role with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus as Freshman Representative. Congresswoman Leger Fernández serves as chair of the Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples of the United States for the 117th Congress. She has also been appointed to the House Committee on Education and Labor, the House Committee on Natural Resources, and the Committee on House Administration.

She is a 17th generation Northern New Mexican. Before coming to Congress, Leger Fernández worked as an attorney and advocate, and won important legal battles to advance voting rights, promote tribal sovereignty, and protect our environment and acequia waters. She has helped secure nearly a billion dollars for, and then helped build, schools, rural health clinics, broadband, businesses, affordable housing and critical infrastructure for New Mexico.

Glenn Schiffbauer, Executive Director of the Santa Fe Chapter of the New Mexico Green Chamber of Commerce, is a native New Mexican. He received his BBA from New Mexico State University and his MBA from the Robert O. Anderson School of Management at the University of New Mexico. After 16 years in management at renowned Rancho Encantado, he started two small businesses in Santa Fe. He also worked with his wife Kim as a consultant for businesses statewide in both marketing and public affairs. In 2005, he became a liaison and project manager for Robert Redford in New Mexico working on a variety of projects from film to governmental to green construction. In October 2012, he became Executive Director for the newly founded Santa Fe Chapter of the New Mexico Green Chamber of Commerce.

Bill Christiansen is the Director of Programs for the Alliance for Water Efficiency.  Bill has been in the water industry since 2002 when he got his start working for Planning and Management Consultants, Ltd. in Carbondale, IL.  Bill joined the Alliance for Water Efficiency in 2007.  Bill’s work has included research related to many facets of water resource management such as policy analysis, water conservation program planning and evaluation, benefit-cost analysis, drought planning, and water rate evaluation.

Veronica Blette manages the WaterSense program in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Water.

Prior to Ms. Blette’s current position, she served as special assistant to the director of the National Drinking Water Program and led the EPA’s Drinking Water Infrastructure Financing Program.

Before joining the EPA in 1997, Ms. Blette worked in the academic research and environmental consulting fields on projects investigating the effects of atmospheric deposition on soils and water quality. She has a Bachelor of Arts in geology from Smith College and a Master of Science in geology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Christine Y. Chavez has a background in water rights administration and energy & water conservation program management in the state of New Mexico. Christine is the Water Conservation Manager for the City of Santa Fe and is a certified Energy Auditor with the Building Performance Institute, Certified Landscape Irrigation Auditor with the Irrigation Association and Qualified Water Efficient Landscaper through EPA WaterSense.
She is a graduate of New Mexico State University (B.S. in Environmental Science and M.S. in Biology).

Most communities in the west have successful water conservation programs. These programs are funded by the community or the local water utility. Private/public sources of monies are available to expand the reach of traditional water conservation programs. These funds could be used to reach the more underserved communities traditional programs have not been able to reach. This panel will expound upon some of these sources of funding and how they might be applied to address social equity water issues in a community.

Arthine is a globally respected leader known for her collaborative approaches at the nexus of water, finance, technology, innovation, and resilient ecosystems. In 2015, she launched WaterFunder, a water infrastructure project finance advisory firm, after mentoring water technology firms. Arthine has global management experience in the public, private, government, academic, start-up, and non-profit industry sectors. She has crafted and implemented growth and expansion strategies for development banks, foreign direct investment agencies, water utilities, capital markets firms, and Silicon Valley tech giants. Arthine is an Army veteran and a Russian linguist, having held roles in data management, military intelligence and civil affairs. Arthine is an angel investor and start-up advisor who invests her resources in prescient business models and solutions to help an ever-changing world. She has an Economics BA from UC Davis and an MBA from IMD in Switzerland.

Will is an internationally recognized thought leader on water strategy and innovation. He has been a sustainability and water strategy advisor to multinationals, water technology companies and NGOs for his entire career. Will works with multinationals on corporate water strategies, water technology innovation and water market entry strategies. His work with water technology companies is as a strategy advisor and investor.
He is currently working on: "DIGITAL WATER: New Technologies for a More Resilient, Secure and Equitable Water Future."

Doug is a lifetime American Rainwater Catchment System Association (ARCSA) member, an Accredited Professional and an ex-Board member of ARCSA. He is a prolific writer and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, Water Efficiency Magazine, Home Power, Taos News and Water News, among others. He also has a regular monthly column in the Santa Fe New Mexican. He is co-author of two water studies that have been widely published: “Rainwater Harvesting Industry Market Size and Trends” and “First-Ever Long-Term Water Conservation Rebate Study”.
Doug is an EPA WaterSense Partner with Certification in Irrigation Auditing. He is an active member of the City of Santa Fe Water Conservation Committee. He is currently a member of the International Code Committee (ICC) working group that is drafting the ICC Rainwater Harvesting Building Codes. Doug is also a certified Permaculture Designer. Doug designs and consults on rainwater and water reuse systems locally and around the country.

Doug is a lifetime American Rainwater Catchment System Association (ARCSA) member, an Accredited Professional and an ex-Board member of ARCSA. He is a prolific writer and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, Water Efficiency Magazine, Home Power, Taos News and Water News, among others. He also has a regular monthly column in the Santa Fe New Mexican. He is co-author of two water studies that have been widely published: “Rainwater Harvesting Industry Market Size and Trends” and “First-Ever Long-Term Water Conservation Rebate Study”.
Doug is an EPA WaterSense Partner with Certification in Irrigation Auditing. He is an active member of the City of Santa Fe Water Conservation Committee. He is currently a member of the International Code Committee (ICC) working group that is drafting the ICC Rainwater Harvesting Building Codes. Doug is also a certified Permaculture Designer. Doug designs and consults on rainwater and water reuse systems locally and around the country.

Glenn Schiffbauer, Executive Director of the Santa Fe Chapter of the New Mexico Green Chamber of Commerce, is a native New Mexican. He received his BBA from New Mexico State University and his MBA from the Robert O. Anderson School of Management at the University of New Mexico. After 16 years in management at renowned Rancho Encantado, he started two small businesses in Santa Fe. He also worked with his wife Kim as a consultant for businesses statewide in both marketing and public affairs. In 2005, he became a liaison and project manager for Robert Redford in New Mexico working on a variety of projects from film to governmental to green construction. In October 2012, he became Executive Director for the newly founded Santa Fe Chapter of the New Mexico Green Chamber of Commerce.

Mike Collignon is the Executive Director of the Green Builder® Coalition, an organization he co-founded in 2010. He engages in national and state-level advocacy and publishes regular content for Green Builder® Media. Mike is also the Chair of the WERS Development Group and the Co-Chair of the Next Generation Water Summit. Finally, he has served as the voice of Green Builder® Media’s online and in-person events from 2012–present.