Inside the Four Walls: Upgrading Building Systems & Renovating Assets to Meet Longterm Goals

Technical Deep Dive into Building Upgrades, MEP Systems and more

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  Jason McCalla

  SVP, Operations

  Silverstein Properties

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  Adam Brooks

  Director, Sustainability

  Prologis

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  Julie Janiski

  Julie Janiski is a partner at Buro Happold and leads integrated teams of engineers, designers, analysts, and subject-matter experts to support a broad range of sustainability goals. She brings an integrated design approach to all her projects and a breadth of decarbonization and sustainability expertise across the US region. Her background includes construction, owner operations, architect and engineering, and her work spans policy and planning to districts and buildings. Some of her key clients include Alexandria Real Estate, BioMed Realty, Harvard Medical School, University of Chicago, Cornell Tech, US State Dept OBO, City of Boston and State of Massachusetts (regarding key energy codes), and Proctor & Gamble Gillette. Passionate about improving human wellbeing while mitigating climate change, Julie leads Buro Happold’s decarbonization efforts, and is responsible for guiding the firm’s net zero carbon agenda. Her technical background allows her to incorporate the latest strategic thinking and innovations in sustainable construction and energy planning in her projects. Julie is a catalyst for change, inspiring those around her to achieve wide-scale and ambitious reductions in emissions, and guiding the transformation of the industry towards a more climate resilient future. Julie holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan and a Master of Design Science in Sustainable Design from the University of Sydney and continues to engage with students at many institutions as adjunct faculty, a visiting lecturer or critic. Her commitments in the local Boston/MA community include being a board member for Built Environment Plus, co-chair of the Boston Carbon Leadership Forum, and an inaugural appointed member of the Stretch Energy Code Technical Advisory Committee for MA DOER. Nationally, Julie is a frequent panelist and contributor to the Urban Land Institute, a part of the ECHO (Embodied Carbon Harmonization and Optimization) project, and a leader in sharing knowledge like our All-Electric Feasibility Study.

  Buro Happold

  Partner

  Julie Janiski

  Partner

  Buro Happold

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  Kelly-Ann Corrigan

  Kelly-Ann Corrigan is the Chief Operating Officer at Runwise, where she leads the teams that power heating and cooling optimization for more than 10,000 buildings across New York City, Chicago, Boston, and Washington D.C. With deep expertise in HVAC performance, energy efficiency, and building operations, Kelly-Ann empowers the Runwise field operations, customer service, and product development teams to serve property managers in implementing best practices that reduce costs, improve resident comfort, and maximize system impact.

  Runwise

  Chief Operating Officer

  Kelly-Ann Corrigan

  Chief Operating Officer

  Runwise

• Moderator

  Randy Topp

  SVP of Energy Services & National Operations Support

  Ainsworth

Investment, Fundraising & Capital Deployment Activity that Drives Sustainable ROI

Investor Returns, Funding Sustainability Related Developments, Projects & Initiatives

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  Lauren Moss

  Chief Sustainability Officer

  Vornado Realty Trust

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  Karen Mahrous

  Karen Mahrous is a Senior Vice President and the Head of ESG for Clarion Partners. She is the Chair of the Firm’s ESG Committee. Karen oversees the ESG team and the Firm’s global ESG strategy, including Net Zero, resilience, efficiency, diversity and health and wellness initiatives. She works with many groups across the Firm to enhance and execute Clarion’s ESG strategy. Prior to joining Clarion, Karen was with CodeGreen Solutions as Director of ESG and Decarbonization Programs. In her time with CodeGreen she oversaw corporate sustainability, ESG reporting, green and wellness building certifications, stakeholder engagement, greenhouse gas accounting and other work for many real estate organizations. She is a member of the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) North America Benchmark Committee, Urban Land Institute and Urban Green Council. She holds LEED AP and WELL AP accreditations. Karen holds an M.S. in Sustainability Management from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego.

  Clarion Partners

  SVP, Head of ESG

  Karen Mahrous

  SVP, Head of ESG

  Clarion Partners

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  Daren Moss

  Mr. Moss is a Managing Director in the Ares Environmental, Social and Governance Group. Prior to joining Ares in 2022, Mr. Moss was a Senior Vice President, Operations and Sustainability at Brixmor Property Group, where he focused on developing and overseeing their ESG program and climate change strategy, directed portfolio wide operations and sustainability initiatives, and led environmental risk and liability management. Previously, Mr. Moss was a Senior Project Manager at Roux Associates, Inc, where he focused on advising clients in a variety of industries related to legacy contamination issues and environmental aspects of property transactions and development. Mr. Moss holds a B.A. from Colgate University in Geology and an M.E.S. from the University of Pennsylvania in Environmental Studies. Mr. Moss is a licensed professional geologist in the State of New York.

  Ares Management

  Managing Director, Head of ESG

  Daren Moss

  Managing Director, Head of ESG

  Ares Management

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  Drew Ades

  Drew Ades serves as Head of Lending and Investment for CPC Climate Capital, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Community Preservation Corporation (CPC), created to drive the decarbonization of the multifamily housing market. Originally capitalized with a $2.4 billion award from the EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund, CPC Climate Capital designs and delivers financial products that accelerate building electrification, energy efficiency, on-site power generation, and battery storage. Mr. Ades oversees product development, underwriting standards, and business development for this national platform that supports equitable, sustainable housing. Mr. Ades is a nationally recognized leader at the intersection of affordable housing finance and climate policy. He brings over 25 years of executive experience across capital markets, mission-driven investment, and environmental strategy. As a former executive at Fannie Mae, he was the architect of its Multifamily Green Financing business, which catalyzed over $100 billion in private investment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from multifamily properties. Prior to CPC, Mr. Ades led Triple Line Strategies, a consultancy focused on building decarbonization and climate-aligned investment. He also served as Senior Advisor to RMI’s Center for Climate-Aligned Finance and Carbon-Free Buildings Program, where he helped shape financial tools and regulatory strategies to accelerate climate solutions in the built environment. Mr. Ades was the founding President and CEO of the Housing Partnership Equity Trust (HPET), a social-purpose REIT that raised over $100 million in private capital to preserve and retrofit more than 3,000 affordable apartments nationwide. He has also held senior leadership roles in Capital One’s Multifamily Lending business, where he expanded affordable and FHA lending operations across multiple U.S. markets. Mr. Ades holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and a BA in Political Economy from Williams College. He also serves on the boards of Center Creek Capital and An Open Book Foundation.

  CPC Climate Capital

  SVP Head of Lending & Investments

  Drew Ades

  SVP Head of Lending & Investments

  CPC Climate Capital

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  Jeremy Porter

  Dr. Jeremy R. Porter is a Quantitative Research Scientist who leads First Street's groundbreaking work on the connection of climate risk to financial risk—including effects on property valuation, climate migration, macroeconomic indicators and risk transfer mechanisms. An internationally recognized expert on climate exposure and its downstream consequences, Dr. Porter has authored more than 140 peer-reviewed publications on climate risk, spatial analysis, machine learning, and statistical modeling. His insights are regularly featured in top media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Dr. Porter is a member of the team that founded First Street. Prior to joining, he enjoyed a distinguished academic career, founding CUNY’s Master’s program in Quantitative Modeling and launching influential scientific journals like Spatial Demography. He has secured millions in academic research funding and holds a Ph.D. in Demography with minors in Statistics and Geospatial Technologies, plus a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Applied Statistics.

  First Street

  Chief Economist

  Jeremy Porter

  Chief Economist

  First Street

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  Morris DeFeo, Jr.

  Morris F. DeFeo, Jr. is a partner and chair of Herrick’s Corporate Department, where he focuses on domestic and international capital markets, corporate finance and M&A transactions, and corporate governance and compliance counseling for boards, committees and directors of public and private companies and not-for-profit entities. Morris advises public and private corporations, partnerships, limited liability companies, real estate investment trusts (REITs), private equity firms and funds, venture and hedge funds, private investment funds and other clients in U.S. and cross-border joint ventures and strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, consolidations, asset and stock acquisitions and dispositions, all aspects of private equity and venture capital fund transactions and public and private offerings of debt and equity securities, including initial public offerings and shelf-registered offerings, Rule 144A high-yield debt offerings and exchange listings. Morris provides counsel to fund sponsors and investors on a range of investment activities including fund formation, structuring arrangements, senior and mezzanine debt, distressed investments, syndications, leveraged buyouts, majority and minority stake investments, sales and divestitures as well as exit strategies. He also advises clients on compliance with the registration, proxy solicitation and periodic reporting requirements of the U.S. securities laws, and the complex requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, such as those related to section 404 internal control over financial reporting, disclosure controls and governance. Morris has advised clients, including start-ups and emerging growth companies in the U.S., the Middle East/North Africa, Europe, India and the Far East, which have operated in a range of sectors, including defense, automotive, energy, information technology, manufacturing and telecommunications. Earlier in his career, Morris served as executive vice president of corporate and international transactions for CAIS Internet, a Nasdaq-listed Internet access solutions company. In that capacity, he helped build out CAIS's deployment in Asia, Australia and Europe through merger and acquisition transactions, joint ventures and strategic relationships with foreign telecom, infrastructure, equipment and hospitality companies in 16 countries. From 1990 to 1991, Morris worked as a foreign visiting attorney in the law firm of Yuasa and Hara in Tokyo, Japan.

  Herrick

  Partner

  Moderator

  Morris DeFeo, Jr.

  Partner

  Herrick

Innovative Decarbonization Strategies & Enhancing Energy Efficiency

Embodied Carbon vs. Operational Carbon + Creative and Cost-Effective Ways to Increase Efficiency

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  Carrie Denning Jackson

  Carrie Denning Jackson is the Director of Innovation and Sustainability at Jamestown. She manages ESG initiatives across the portfolio and leads the technology practice, including pilots, data and research, and generative AI. Ms. Denning Jackson was a Director on the Development team at Sidewalk Labs, Google’s urban innovation company. She is a board member of Governors Island Foundation, the New York Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, PlanA Health, trubel&co, an advisor to Georgia Tech’s Master of Science in Urban Analytics, and she is also the founder of Place as Medicine, an organization focused on creating healthy places. Ms. Denning Jackson has a Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, and Master of Business Administration from Stanford University.

  Jamestown

  Director of Innovation & Sustainability

  Carrie Denning Jackson

  Director of Innovation & Sustainability

  Jamestown

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  Laura Humphrey

  Senior Director of Energy & Sustainability

  L+M Development Partners

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  Paul Rode

  Paul Rode joined Tishman Speyer in 2021 to lead engineering and operational activities across the U.S. portfolio. In his role, he is responsible for ensuring that properties are safe, efficient, resilient, sustainability focused, and provide world class environments for optimal customer productivity. Before joining Tishman Speyer, Paul was Director of Engineering for RXR Realty, where he oversaw operations and energy for all new and existing buildings across all asset classes. He also was the Senior Vice President of Engineering and Energy for The Related Companies, responsible for engineering operations, capital projects, and utility purchasing across over 400 buildings of mixed asset types. Paul has international experience as a Project Executive for deep energy the U.S. State Department’s Expert Speaker Program, serves on various energy and code retrofit and cogeneration projects in Melbourne, London, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as well as the green retrofit of the Empire State Building. He was one of the original members of the NRDC’s High Performance Tenant Interiors project team, participated in committees, and is a member of the Facility Committee for the Tarrytown School Board. Paul holds his BS in chemical engineering from Manhattan College.

  Tishman Speyer

  MD, Head of Engineering and Property Operations

  Paul Rode

  MD, Head of Engineering and Property Operations

  Tishman Speyer

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  Amanda Clevinger

  Amanda Clevinger leads policy and program strategy at Bright Power, pairing compliance requirements with incentives and financing opportunities to help decarbonize the multifamily sector. She spearheads the company's Local Law 97 strategy, developing new services and working one-on-one as a strategic advisor to real estate clients to support building decarbonization. Amanda also shapes policy at the local, state, and federal levels - including through DOB working groups and the Regulatory Committee of the NY Energy Consumers Council – continually advocating for effective, equitable, and cost-conscious policy solutions

  Bright Power

  Director, Policy & Programs

  Amanda Clevinger

  Director, Policy & Programs

  Bright Power

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  Tristan Schwartzman

  Tristan Schwartzman is a major innovative presence in energy efficiency in Greater New York. With Tristan as Director of Energy Services, Goldman Copeland has completed energy audits and retro-commissioning projects for more than 100 million square feet of commercial property. He has also led those buildings through the design and implementation of annual, multi-million-dollar, capital improvement projects based on the findings of those reports, generating energy savings and financial savings for property owners. In the process, he and his team have created award-winning innovations, advancing the field. Under Tristan’s leadership, Goldman Copeland has been recognized with multiple ACEC New York Platinum Awards. Tristan and his team have pioneered the use of steam optimization panels to maximize the efficiency of aging steam-based cooling plants in large commercial buildings in New York City. He has expanded the use of those panels to incorporate control of auxiliary equipment to optimize the plant holistically rather than focus solely on the chiller. In doing so, he worked with Con Edison to establish that the system qualifies for rebates under their demand-management program. Tristan has worked with the City of New York and PSE&G to implement programs to reduce energy consumption. He also worked with NYSERDA to pilot a statewide energy-saving initiative. He serves on the ACEC Energy Committee and advises NYECC on energy and sustainability issues. Tristan was named Association of Energy Engineers International Energy Engineer of the Year in 2024.

  Goldman Copeland

  Principal, Director of Energy Services

  Tristan Schwartzman

  Principal, Director of Energy Services

  Goldman Copeland

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  Michael Clain

  Michael Clain is a Partner with Windels Marx, who focuses on the structuring, negotiation, and documentation of a variety of credit products, including broadly syndicated corporate loans, asset-based loans, cash flow loans, trade and supply-chain finance, the purchase and sale of individual loans and loan portfolios, and the workout of troubled assets. His clients include money-center and regional banks, foreign banks, investment funds and finance companies. He leads the firm’s Renewable Energy & Sustainability Practice Group and authors the newsletter “Decarbonize NY”, which informs property owners and managers, lenders, developers and sustainability professionals in their pursuit of a greener New York. Connect with Michael at 212.237.1035 or mclain@windelsmarx.com.

  Windels Marx

  Partner

  Moderator

  Michael Clain

  Partner

  Windels Marx

Managing Climate Risk, Waste Management: Future Proofing Your Assets & Capex Planning

Getting Ahead of Climate Change and Impacts on Longterm Real Estate Implications

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  Gautami Palanki

  Gautami is an award-winning sustainability strategist. Her high impact work bridges business strategy with environmental and social outcomes, helping corporations, nonprofits, and startups align sustainability with both purpose and performance to create long-term value and healthier communities. Gautami currently leads the enterprise wide sustainability platform at AvalonBay Communities, a equity real estate investment trust specializing in the development, redevelopment, acquisition, and management of multifamily apartment communities. With a background in architecture and systems thinking, she has shaped the next generation of global leadership standards and led enterprise-wide strategies grounded in science-based climate goals. Growing up in India, she learned early the value of resourcefulness and community—principles that continue to guide her approach to building resilient, inclusive systems. A frequent speaker at global forums, Gautami champions collaboration and is committed to partnerships that drive meaningful, lasting change.

  AvalonBay Communities

  VP, Sustainability

  Gautami Palanki

  VP, Sustainability

  AvalonBay Communities

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  Jenna Agins

  Assistant Director, Energy & Sustainability

  NYU Langone Health

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  Angela Licata-Misiak

  Angela Licata is the Deputy Commissioner for Sustainability at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The range of programs under Ms. Licata’s purview reflects the broad mandate of the Department as a public utility providing high-quality drinking water, stormwater and wastewater services. Ms. Licata guides the City’s practices for improving harbor water quality through the abatement of combined sewer overflows and the reduction of stormwater pollution. She is a pioneer in proactively strengthening the city's and utility's resilience to increasingly severe weather. By overseeing the planning for the utility’s services to support economic vitality and growth, Ms. Licata has been key in guiding DEP contributions to many large neighborhood rezonings that have unlocked the potential for substantial new housing units across the city. She was also instrumental in modernizing the New York City Air Code in 2016, the first major overhaul since the 1970s. Ms. Licata has served on the Board of Directors for the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, including two years as President, she also as served on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Clean Water Agencies for nine years. Ms. Licata played important advisory roles on both boards on topics including affordable water rates and integrated planning. She has dedicated her career to public service and plays a crucial role in envisioning, developing, and implementing programs aimed at improving the health and quality of life of all New Yorkers.

  NYC Environmental Protection

  Deputy Commissioner

  Angela Licata-Misiak

  Deputy Commissioner

  NYC Environmental Protection

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  Amari Jones

  Amari Jones Scriven is Manager of Corporate Sustainability for Nucor Corporation. In this role, Amari is responsible for leading key initiatives that advance Nucor’s environmental stewardship and sustainability goals. Her primary focus areas include providing technical expertise on environmental matters, supporting the development and implementation of company-wide sustainability targets and leading decarbonization efforts aimed at reducing Nucor’s enterprise carbon footprint. Amari regularly engages with investors, policymakers and industry organizations on greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction strategies in the steel sector. Through her leadership, Amari plays a critical role in driving Nucor’s long-term strategy toward sustainable growth and advancing low-carbon steelmaking. Amari joined Nucor in 2021 as the Environmental Manager at Nucor Steel Texas, where she oversaw the environmental, health, safety and quality functions for the Texas division. In this capacity, she worked closely with plant operations, regulatory agencies and corporate leadership to ensure compliance with environmental regulations and to foster a culture of safety and sustainability throughout the organization. Before joining Nucor, Amari built a successful career in the oil, gas and petrochemical industry, where she held various environmental, health and safety leadership positions. Her experience spans multiple facets of industrial operations, including permitting, compliance, environmental management systems, process safety and corporate sustainability reporting. Amari holds a Bachelor of Science degree in environmental science from Florida A&M University and a master’s degree in engineering management from Duke University. Amari is married to her husband Woodrow.

  Nucor

  Manager of Corporate Sustainability

  Amari Jones

  Manager of Corporate Sustainability

  Nucor

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  Ruben Petit

  Ruben Petit is a sustainability and business development professional from the Netherlands, and serves as Chief Commercial and Sustainability Officer at Ener.co. He has worked across food, textiles, and energy efficiency, focusing on roles that align commercial growth with measurable environmental impact. Having helped scale impact-driven startups, Ruben brings a global perspective, entrepreneurial mindset, and practical understanding of how sustainability solutions can create financial value, operational resilience, and long-term environmental benefits.

  Ener.co

  Sustainability & Partnerships Officer

  Ruben Petit

  Sustainability & Partnerships Officer

  Ener.co

• Moderator

  Adam Fisher

  Managing Director, Sustainable & Technical Brokerage

  JLL