In honor of the heritage month in May, we are amplifying the voices of those in our green building community who identify as Asian American, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Here, four leaders in our community share their thoughts with USGBC on the the challenges of their profession, how they embrace cultural diversity and what green projects most inspire them:

Maia Kumari Bree Chowdhury, senior architect, AECOM
Seonhee Kim, director of sustainability, principal, Design Collective, Inc.
Gail Suzuki-Jones, energy efficiency and renewable energy program manager, State of Hawaii
Michelle Watanabe, studio leader, director, Nelson Worldwide

What are the challenges of your professional role in helping to build a more sustainable world?

Suzuki-Jones: While these are very challenging times, there are immense opportunities that make working in this arena both energizing and demanding. The transformational aspect of the work to build a more sustainable world encourages me to seek out opportunities to partner and team up with others and to listen to what the community concerns are, as that is the way to achieve and exceed the goals that have been set. As new funding becomes available, we are seeking ways to do more, with less time, with more energy, and to support others in finding their related roles and responsibilities.

Watanabe: My role, in a nutshell, is to provide the services our clients need to move forward with their building portfolios at whatever extent their budget, time and vision allows and with what mutual goals we share. Having said that, for one reason or another only a fraction of our client base invests in sustainable strategies, even with data showing the return to be gained. And as much as we serve a wide range of project sizes, there are always those that remain on the outer fringes who have no room for interest in building a more sustainable world, even if we make the effort to educate how it would mean more savings for them in the long run.

Sometimes, people just don’t have the bandwidth, and there’s no getting around it unless you are willing to provide the support at no cost—and that doesn’t always work. So, the same challenge still remains at large as to how true market transformation can occur when the biggest hurdle is reaching building owners (and also renters) who have no incentive to make the leaps we want to see in protecting and enjoying the environment we take so much for granted, and which many of us know is in a critical state.

A woman and her young son, both in traditional dress, on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol

Michelle Watanabe, studio leader, director, Nelson Worldwide. Photo courtesy of Watanabe.

Kim: The biggest challenge, in my opinion, is that the climate is changing faster than our mitigation efforts. The challenge of my professional role is also the speed and extent of the role, how quickly it evolves and how holistic it ought to be, because sustainability professionals are demanded to provide solutions to a very complex problem, and the problem itself is not a static one. Therefore, a quick fix that might have worked five years ago is not going to be a good enough solution for today’s problems we are encountering.

Being nimble and agile, along with heavy doses of curiosity and lifetime learning, becomes a prerequisite for my role as a sustainability director, and it fits my temperament. I am a trained architect, but having a previous life as a scientist becomes advantageous when looking at complex and dynamic problems and figuring out how to tackle the issue. Though the challenge is unprecedented, I remain optimistic that humanity will finally get its act together and move toward a just and equitable future. I rely less on technological interventions, but more on changes in human behavior and the empathy that empowered communities can bring.

On the project level, I experience a challenge in bringing integrative process at the right time to the right group of participants. When expertise is brought up front at the beginning, it can shape the trajectory of the project toward high-performance outcomes without much added cost. However, bringing everyone together at the beginning of the project remains challenging due to various reasons.

Chowdhury: A great challenge that we face as design professionals in creating a more sustainable world is responding to the problem and opportunity of responding to the hydrological balance and its changes as they affect the built environment. This affects everyone worldwide, and can be seen as a tremendous problem, yet also a source of provocation into rich brainstorming that is solution-oriented. Being open to inspired solutions helps us to be ahead of the curve of problems before they arise.

In support of this, I suggest that sustainability is a mindset as much as it is an engineering toolkit. A sustainability mindset means putting on one’s “solutions hat” and being open to finding new pathways. As far as a personal challenge in sustainability work, it is the daily walk of practicing what I preach. I’m constantly reminded that my own small actions do have a ripple effect. I try not to be too hard on myself if I don’t measure up to my perfectionistic standards. I think the greatest hurdle is one’s own mindset, and so it’s important to encourage small, incremental steps that build momentum, even if we don’t see an immediate impact on the whole.

How do you think the industry could become more equitable and inclusive for Asian American and Pacific Islander professionals in green roles?

Chowdhury: This is a great question that I would break down into smaller parts. How could the industry become more equitable and inclusive generally? I think this starts with K–12 education and extending a vision of opportunity to everyone. How could the industry become more equitable and inclusive for Asian American and Pacific Islander professionals? By shining a spotlight like this here, on more of the accomplishments and achievements. By offering more opportunities for advancement. By appreciating work already in progress by those professionals, engaged and moving upward in the industry.

How could the industry become more equitable and inclusive for Asian American and Pacific Islanders in green roles, specifically? Allow heritage, and an understanding of what it means to be from a place, in the diaspora, and synthesizing with a larger, dominant community, to influence design and engineering solutions. There is much to be learned from the rich heritage of Asian American and Pacific Islander design and construction, both in a traditional sense, and also in a contemporary interpretation. For example, we can build on—or deviate from, having learned from—traditions of Feng Shui and Vaastu, with contemporary approaches like biophilic design. Let these inspirations and cultural approaches be part of the weave going forward.

A woman in a red wrap smiles at the camera against an outdoor backdrop.

Maia Kumari Bree Chowdhury, senior architect, AECOM. Photo courtesy of Chowdhury.

Kim: I believe that the first step of all inclusion is representation. AAPI is a big umbrella itself, including diverse cultural heritages and geographical origins. Harnessing different perspectives and lived/learned experiences will make any roles better, but especially for sustainability professions. With several thousand years in the history of human civilization, there is so much more collective genius beyond what we consider mainstream right now, and folks in AAPI are the embodiment of the resources that we haven’t fully tapped into. Acknowledgement and respect toward people with different backgrounds should set us on the right path to tap into collective genius.

I also strongly believe that representation alone is not enough to garner the potential. As I said earlier, AAPI is a big tent, and oversimplification and generalization would be a disservice to this diverse group. However, I think certain bias and stereotypes become real barriers keeping us from being authentic to our own identity. Experiencing a culture of celebrating differences helped me recognize and appreciate my strengths inherited from my heritage, and I am committed to doing the same for others regardless of the source of difference. This way, I become a part of active inclusion practice, where I not only “invite people to come to the party, but also ask them to dance” with me. (By the way, I am a horrible dancer, but willing to take a stage with others if that is what it takes.)

Watanabe: I am a double whammy when it comes to being a minority, as a woman and an Asian American. And though I’m not a native Pacific Islander, I did grow up on the tiny island of Guam out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for the first couple decades of my life. But despite all that, I have never really thought there was a need to find more equity or inclusivity for me over the years, personally, as I evolved into my role as sustainable champion in my profession. I’ve never been very self-aware about where I came from or what I look like, just always focused on my passion at work and paving paths for myself while collaborating with those who around me who shared the same interest.

But along the way, I have met colleagues who struggled to be heard due to cultural differences that, after much listening and learning about their circumstances, was essentially a misalignment of expectations. So I guess you can say that there is that hurdle that bicultural and multilingual individuals like myself can understand and help work through. So, that’s my long way of answering that perhaps equity and inclusivity can be improved by creating better bridges between groups that don’t quite meet eye to eye or, in some cases, are even aware of one another's existence.

Suzuki-Jones: There is a demand for more equity and inclusion, and the workforce development and “Good Jobs” programs supported by federal and other funding should be taken advantage of by industry and others. The labor shortage has proven to be both an opportunity and a challenge. Now, more than ever, we have the support to train and mentor all interested and upcoming professionals. Working with K–12, community college and university-level educators to develop an educational pathway from kindergarten to career with curricula and toolkits on clean energy and green building will create trained ambassadors and advocates committed to sustainable design, building and engineering.

A woman smiles at the camera with three companions.

Gail Suzuki-Jones (second from left), energy efficiency and renewable energy program manager, State of Hawaii, participating in the Happy Energy Star Day with colleagues from the Clean Energy Wayfinders, the Board of Water Supply, the Hawaii State Energy Office and Hawaii Energy. Photo courtesy of Suzuki-Jones.

What has been your favorite sustainability project or activity?

Watanabe: I have many favorites, because sustainability inherently requires the gathering of diverse people—familiar and new—who really care about our planet, the quality of life we all lead and what we leave behind for the next generations. People who gather for this purpose are just inherently good, and we all mutually elevate each other every time we connect. Generosity and kindness are the baseline for projects and activities, often with unpaid folks who just want to see change when paid folks—highly paid ones especially—aren’t moving the needle. Humanity is founded on this sense of belonging with each other and placemaking, and when we embrace that identity on a singular holistic global level, we find meaning that is undeniable and enjoyable at the same time.

Kim: Design Collective is an AIA 2030 commitment signatory, and the process of establishing a firmwide sustainability action plan remains one of the top favorite moments because of the various efforts poured in to engage people and establish firmwide goals that impact our work, people and practice. I also enjoy working with our clients in shaping performance goals for the project and guiding them with a data-informed design approach.

We recently put together a JEDI (justice, equity, diversity and inclusion) framework for a project that is a companion to the Framework for Design Excellence (by AIA) that we use when establishing sustainability goals and priorities for the project. I am excited to pilot and subsequently scale up both frameworks for all our projects.

A woman in a cardigan smiles at the camera.

Seonhee Kim, director of sustainability, principal, Design Collective, Inc. Photo courtesy of Kim.

Suzuki-Jones: Working with the Hawaii State Energy Office’s Clean Energy Wayfinders and the Hawaii Green Business Program’s Ten Entry Level Program! This past year, seven diverse Wayfinders on four of the islands in Hawaii—Hawaii, Kauai, Maui and Oahu—have been mentored and trained to help educate and recruit small businesses and organizations on the Ten Entry Level Checklist (the top 10 energy, water, recycling, purchasing and green cleaning measures to implement). Through this effort and working closely with VISTA members and other mentors, we have reached and will recognize entities in the rural communities in Hawaii, and the Wayfinders are now ambassadors and advocates for going green!

Chowdhury: Hands down, my favorite sustainability activity has been the immersive carbon modeling training at AECOM. This was a global training involving staff from our company that allowed me to advance my work in providing sustainable solutions to clients, while also synthesizing all of my previous knowledge of sustainability in adaptive reuse and historic restoration. This carbon modeling upskilling is part of our global decarbonization approach, ScopeX, which aims to reduce the carbon impact of major projects across our planning, design and construction projects by 50% compared to industry norms.

I am eager to see more of this work both within my company and also in the industry as a whole. Carbon modeling and carbon calculations should be considered as part of the budget on any project. As a senior architect with the company, I am in a position to advocate for the integration of carbon modeling on all of our projects, and this is certainly the way forward in the industry. As a woman of mixed Asian and European heritage, I feel the resonance of being at the helm of both environmentalism and of representing BIPOC women in sustainable architecture and engineering, in this mode of work.

Read insights from more Asian American and Pacific Islander voices in green building

Asian American voices in green building: Finding sustainable solutions