August 30, 2008
Mark Caserta played a leading role in fighting for the city’s environment for more than twelve years, as Deputy Director of New Yorkers for Parks, Director of the Waterfront Parks Coalition, and NYC Lobbyist for the New York League of Conservation Voters. In April 2004, Mark and his wife Samantha opened an eco-friendly home and lifestyle store in Park Slope, Brooklyn, known as
3r Living. A second store in Maplewood, New Jersey, opened in October 2007. 3r Living is now online, only, at
3rliving.com. Mark is also a web and social media consultant to small businesses through his company M2C Consulting/Main Street Complete. Board Member 2003-2006, 2009-present
Alison Novak is a tree hugging real estate developer. She came to real estate by way of the public sector, where she worked on the revitalization of commercial districts. Alison took her Master in City Planning and Master of Science in Real Estate Development from MIT where she found even more sustainably-minded folks than in Northern California. Now she endeavors to bring sustainability to The Hudson Companies’ projects, by way of its first green building project, as well as to other New Yorkers via GreenhomeNYC. Inspired by solutions that combat multiple problems, Alison appreciates the intersection of sustainability, social justice, urban form, and bricks-and-mortar that can be found in sustainable real estate development.
Ariella Rosenberg Maron is the Deputy Commissioner for Energy Management at the NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services. Prior to this role, she was the Deputy Director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, the office responsible for the implementation of PlaNYC, the city’s long-term sustainability plan. She was part of the core team that developed PlaNYC, focusing on air and water quality, energy, and climate change. She has also worked as a senior project manager in the Energy Division of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, as an urban planner in the Bronx Office of the New York City Department of City Planning, and as an analyst at the energy, economic consulting firm PA Consulting Group (formerly PHB Hagler Bailly). Ariella currently teaches a course on sustainability indicators at the Pratt Institute. She received her Master in City Planning from MIT where she concentrated on environmental policy and urban design and focused her thesis research on mainstreaming green building in NYC. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Aaron Yowell has been with GreenHomeNYC from the start. During the day, Aaron is real estate lawyer at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. He recently co-authored a paper analyzing a sustainability and opportunity indicators,
Building Environmentally Sustainable Communities: A Framework for Inclusivity. Before entering private practice, Aaron was law clerk to the Honorable William H. Walls, Senior District Judge in the District of New Jersey and before that a technology professional at now-defunct Blink.com (where he met GreenHomeNYC co-founder, Bomee Jung). He is and always will be a geek, whether about urban real estate, technology and design, housing finance or even
triathlon.
F.L. Andrew Padian is Vice President for Energy Initiatives for The Community Preservation Corporation (CPC), a not-for-profit affordable housing lender throughout NY, NJ, and CT. At CPC, he is assisting in the implementation of the Green Financing Initiative, working with CPC staff and building owners across the tri-state area.
Andy works with GreenHomeNYC volunteers and other interested parties with the monthly Green Career meet-up, which helps people transitioning into, or back into, the sustainability field. Andy has leads GreenHomeNYC/ Building Performance Institute (BPI) trainings including a nine-session Multifamily Building Analyst (MFBA) course.
He has 30 years of experience in the unique building science of multifamily buildings, with an emphasis on the affordable housing sector. He has performed detailed energy analysis on thousands of buildings across the country, providing recommendations for energy and water efficiency, comfort, durability, and health & safety for both new and existing buildings.
Prior to CPC, Andy ran the Multifamily Buildings Division for Steven Winter Associates, Inc.; worked for the Association for Energy Affordability; worked as an independent consultant; and toiled in the NYC Mayor’s Energy Office and the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Andy is a frequent contributor to energy and sustainable publications, and has spoken at numerous conferences across the country over the last 25 years. He lives in NYC, and is involved in many sustainable causes there, including GreenHomeNYC, the Clinton Community Garden, and the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA).
Gita Nandan is co-founder of thread collective, a multidisciplinary design firm based in New York, whose projects include architecture, landscape and sustainable design. Working on a range of projects from a small town in south africa to commercial developments, to residential renovation, Gita brings an integrated approach to her work, addressing sustainabilty at every phase of the design. Gita is a registered architect in New York and New Jersey, and is a LEED-Accredited Professional. Recently Gita worked with the USGBC on the Green Codes Task Force to help create a comprehensive set of standards to transform NYC’s building code. In addition, Gita currently teaches at the Art Institute and Pratt Institute, where she brings sustainable issues to the core of her studio courses.
GreenHomeNYC founder
Bomee Jung currently serves as the Senior Program Director for Green Communities in the New York office of Enterprise Community Partners, a leading national affordable housing organization. In this role, she manages the design, delivery and assessment of Enterprise’s initiatives to improve the energy and environmental performance of affordable housing in New York. These initiatives include expanding the availability of financial and technical resources, promoting a policy and regulatory environment that encourages green building, and strengthening the capacity for sustainable construction, management and operation in the affordable housing community. She also jointly oversees the $18,000,000 LISC/Enterprise multifamily weatherization program, which will service more than 2000 units by September 2011.
Before turning her attention to urban sustainability, Bomee spent several years developing data-driven, Internet-based applications, and as a result has a particular interest in
building energy metrics and data analysis.
In addition to her involvement in GreenHomeNYC, she serves on the board of directors of Asian Americans for Equality (
AAFE), the only citywide community development corporation serving New York City’s more than 800,000 Asian American residents. In fall 2011, she will be teaching in the
Capstone Program of NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
Bomee holds a Master in City Planning degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature and Japanese from the University of Georgia.
Cat Fitzgerald became involved with GreenHomeNYC in 2002 while doing research on green and sustainable products and furnishings for an independent art curator. She was excited to discover that ecologically responsible design was becoming increasingly important to the next generation of artists and designers (and that was before the recent green explosion). She has enjoyed continuing her self-education in all things green through GreenHomeNYC’s forums and open houses. In her other time Cat is a customer experience consultant and analyst, working hard to make websites easier for people to use. She was also the co-founder of August Press, an art book publishing company, and was previously an editor and publisher of Blind Spot, a New York City-based photography magazine. A graduate of Vassar College with a degree in Art History, Cat has an incurable case of wanderlust and loves to hike, surf, take pictures and get out for fresh air as often as possible.
