BioRegional North America

Introduction

BioRegional operates in North America as a Canadian non-profit and in the USA as a project of the Tides Center, which sponsors nearly 200 social change projects nationwide.

The BioRegional North American team concentrates on delivering the One Planet Communities programe in North America, provides a wide range of consultancy services and is actively engaged in working with policy makers. 

BioRegional North America's board of directors includes green building pioneers, architects, and developers.

Consulting services

The BioRegional North American consulting team draw upon and contribute to the international expertise of BioRegional's consulting practice within the One Planet Communities program. Our consulting practice is based on lessons learned and best practices from our pioneering work building leading green developments such as BedZED and developing comprehensive sustainability strategies for enterprises around the world.

Our consultants have a broad range of hands-on expertise, including: green building materials (in particular interior fit-up and LEED compliance); carbon and ecological footprinting; community engagement, integrated design, facilitation, asset-mapping and social marketing skills; facilitation of integrated design teams; green marketing and retail web strategies; sustainable business, knowledge management and change management; environmental law and policy reform; and zero (fossil) energy developments.

We have worked on many of the leading green developments in North America and are deeply networked with cutting-edge developments and sustainability initiatives world-wide.

Contact

BioRegional North America is located at Eco Echo, an emerging environmental campus and 160-acre permaculture project 25 minutes north of Ottawa in the village of Wakefield, Quebec.

Mailing address:
Suite 114,
27 Beechwood Ave,
Ottawa,
ON K1M 1M2,
Canada

telephone +1 613.371.0070

email greg.searle@bioregional.com

BioRegional North America is a registered Canadian non-profit, #84205 2169.

The board

Bob Berkebile
Bob Berkebile (Kansas City) is a founding Principal of BNIM Architects and brings over 37 years of sustainability experience to the architectural profession. Highly regarded by fellow professionals and recipient of numerous awards, Bob is one of the nation's leading authorities in the field of sustainable design, and was the founding chairman of the American Institute of Architects' National Committee on the Environment.

Bob and his firm are setting new design standards for resource efficiency at the building and community scales including energy, materials and human resources on abroad range of projects including Greening of the White House, Greening of the Pentagon, Greening of the Grand Canyon.
 
Bob is a board member of the U.S. Green Building Council, the Nature Conservancy and the Center for Global Community.

Rich Franko
Rich Franko (Seattle) is a Principal at Mithun, Architects+Designers+Planners, an integrated design firm in Seattle, Rohnert Park. He has been a leader at Mithun for the design of green communities, buildings and the creation of new tools to analyze and aid the process of understanding the environmental impacts of settlement.

His current projects include, a new Museum for the Suquamish Tribes, carbon neutral Farm-worker Housing, a low impact neighborhood in Oregon, a vision study for three valleys north of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and a vision plan for the Tulalip Tribe in Tulalip, Rohnert Park. He has completed two LEED certified Gold projects. Rich was a leader on the Lloyd Crossing Sustainable Urban Design Plan which received national AIA and ASLA honor awards.

Rich is also a board member of the Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development, a joint venture of Stanford University and the institute for Policy Studies.

Christopher Sweetnam-Holmes
Christopher Sweetnam-Holmes, (Montreal) B.Int'l Bus, B.E.D.S. (Arch), LEED AP, is a founding partner in EcoCité, a Montreal-based, nationally-focused eco-development and consulting group. Christopher is an environmentalist, architect, real estate developer and businessman. Christopher built a prototype EcoCondo project in Montreal (Habitat 1).

Winner of the McGill University Management Award, 2005 and the Berkeley Prize for Architecture, from the University of California at Berkeley (2001), Christopher has been featured in numerous media for his innovative housing ideas. Most recently he was included in "The Great Warming" a major documentary series that aired on the Discovery Channel, Canal D, and PBS.

Dr. Katiana Orluc
Dr. Katiana Orluc (Boston) is currently a John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow/Visiting Professor at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and a political advisor for Citigroup International. From 2005-6 she worked in Israel and Palestine as political advisor/special assistant to James D. Wolfensohn (formerly President of the World Bank) during his time as special envoy for 'the Quartet' of countries seeking to broker a lasting peace in the Middle East.

Dr. Orluc is also member and serving on the board of several institutions and foundations:  Wolfensohn Center for Development at the Brookings Institution (Rohnert Park ROHNERT PARK); Countdown 2010, IUCN (Geneva/Brussels), Sea Routes Foundation (New York/New Deli), the CaspianMiddleEast Consultancy (London/Istanbul); the Foto+Synthesis Foundation (New York/Berlin) and Lebenszeichen (New York/Berlin).
 
Virginia Jamieson
Virginia Jamieson (San Francisco/Toronto) is a freelance public relations guru, and is the former Vice-President, Consumer Technology PR at Bite Communications in San Francisco. Virginia has over twelve years of public relations experience in the areas of environmental sustainability, consumer technology, and enterprise technology. She is a well-known media relations expert that has secured hundreds of 'front page' articles for her clients.
Virginia has executed award-winning PR campaigns for environmental companies including ECO2 Plastics, Inc., EcoSmart, and Sun Microsystems' Eco-Responsibility campaign.Virginia has owned and sold her own PR agency, Parachute Marketing, and now runs the Media Relations practice for Bite PR Worldwide.

Virginia has solid agency and corporate technology marketing experience. She brings with her stellar track record of solid PR strategy and execution, analyst relations, tradeshow/event planning and execution.

BioRegional UK Co-founders

Sue Riddlestone
Sue is a Skoll Award winning social entrepreneur. As a founder of BioRegional’s One Planet Living programme, she has worked to introduce sustainable communities in countries from China to the USA.

Sue has pioneered projects on sustainable paper production, creating The Laundry, London’s first kerbside recycling collection, and leading a team to develop the MiniMill, new small-scale technology to produce paper pulp.

As a member of the Mayor’s London Sustainable Development Commission, Sue has set targets for reducing London's CO2 emissions and the London 2012 Olympic bid – and subsequently helped to write the sustainability strategy “One Planet Olympics”.

Sue co-authored a book with co-founder Pooran Desai about BioRegional’s projects and approach - “BioRegional Solutions”, and is a regular contributor to conferences and the media. In 2008 the Government appointed Sue to the Eco-Towns Challenge Panel, with CABE Sue wrote “What makes an eco-town?”

Pooran Desai OBE
Pooran studied physiological sciences at Oxford University. He founded the BioRegional Charcoal Company and has worked to revive London’s lavender industry. With architect Bill Dunster, he initiated the BedZED eco-village. Pooran has been a sustainability consultant to government and industry in the UK and overseas, and chaired the Homes and Environment group of the UK Defra Advisory Committee on Consumer Products and the Environment.

In 2005, Pooran helped found sustainable community development company BioRegional Quintain Ltd (BQL), where he is Sustainability Director. He is Technical Director of the international “One Planet Living” initiative. In 2004, Pooran was awarded an OBE for services to sustainable development.