Sustainability in Bay Area Design & Development

Sara Neff is the Head of ESG, Lendlease Americas, where she provides leadership and management oversight in developing, implementing and driving Lendlease's corporate sustainability framework in the Americas region, with the goal of achieving absolute zero carbon across all scopes by 2040. Prior to that role, she served as Senior Vice President, Sustainability at Kilroy Realty Corporation. Ms. Neff was instrumental in the architecture, initiation and execution of Kilroy’s sustainability program. Under her leadership, Kilroy has been recognized as a leader among publicly traded real estate companies on sustainability in the Americas by GRESB for seven of the last eight years and achieved carbon neutral operations at the end of 2020. She is a LEED Fellow and holds a BS from Stanford and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Through hard work and diligence, my objective is to learn every day, improve every day, help build lasting business relationships, add value and help others be successful in their businesses and careers. Work in commercial real estate in a position that offers the challenge to develop, acquire, operate, maintain, repair, modernize and improve the sustainable areas of the built environment. Provide long range value through thoughtful planning, implementation and execution of the day’s work. Employers deserve this level of commitment from their investment in its employee's, and it is what makes companies fundamentally succeed. Your work should be your resume and it should speak to the success of the business as well. Specialties: I have extensive experience in facility operations, maintenance, repair and construction as well as operating & capital improvement projects, bidding and execution of construction projects. I have performed multiple due diligence exercises for acquisition and disposition. I have an eye on sustainability and the USGBC LEED goals and objectives, processes and projects. I also have experience in labor negotiations and contracts.

Christian’s primary concentration is the conceptual design of sustainable and energy-efficient heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and building-controls systems. In 20-plus years as a mechanical engineer, he has become an expert at advanced analysis tools, including energy modeling, thermal-comfort modeling, and glazing and envelope analysis. Among other projects, Christian recently applied his conceptual-design skills to the Parkmerced Residential Development in San Francisco and the new LinkedIn campus in Mountain View, California.