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For nearly two decades, SWBR's Earth Week Speaker Series has rallied designers and community leaders together around one urgent question: How do we build a healthier, more resilient future?

Visionaries in sustainability and the built environment will share ideas and strategies to advance climate action, equity, material health, and ingenuity — not someday, but on every project.

Register for free: http://bit.ly/4uQQNgh

Monday 4/20

From Anxiety to Agency: Reframing Our Climate Response presented by Ryan McPherson (University at Buffalo)

This presentation reframes sustainability and climate action as a mindset shift rather than a prescriptive agenda. Instead of focusing on fear or sacrifice, it explores how changing perspective — how we speak, lead, and frame the challenge — can unlock meaningful, scalable change while reducing climate anxiety and resistance. Drawing on examples from the University at Buffalo’s climate leadership, business principles, generational trends, and beyond, the talk emphasizes that climate change, while unavoidable, presents a powerful opportunity to reinvent how we work, live, and thrive. The core message is simple: lasting progress depends not only on technical solutions, but on how effectively we connect, model behavior, and reimagine the challenge as a catalyst for resilience, innovation, and shared purpose.

Tuesday 4/21

AIA 2030 presented by Mark Maddalina, AIA (SWBR)

SWBR Sustainable Design Director Mark Maddalina explores how the next five years leading to 2030 create a critical window for architects to drive decarbonization at scale. The session outlines how AIA 2030 Commitment reporting clarifies project‑level impacts, how evolving energy codes, electrification policies, and a decarbonizing grid are redefining performance baselines, and how efficiency, electrification, and renewables function as core strategies for reducing operational carbon. Participants will gain practical, scalable approaches for integrating decarbonization across their practice.

Wednesday 4/22

Getting Started with the Common Framework presented by Moniqua Minter (Interface)

What makes a product or material “healthy” or “sustainable?” This presentation offers a more holistic approach to material evaluation with the Common Materials Framework (CMF). The course examines the significant impact of building products on our well-being and the environment through three lenses: embodied carbon, green chemistry, and circular economy. Alongside identifying these impacts, this course provides questions we can ask to drive the market towards better products for ourselves, our clients, and the world.

Thursday 4/23

Reweaving the Circular System: Scaling Circular Innovation in Post Consumer Textiles presented by Jennifer Lake (Goodwill of the Finger Lakes)

This presentation shares explains the rapid acceleration of textile waste, the fastest growing waste sector, the impacts of that growth, why there aren’t simple solutions and actionable ways that circular systems are developing to scale and what you can do to support it. Attendees will be able to define slow fashion as an ecosystem-based approach spanning environmental responsibility, repair culture, ethical labor, thrift/reuse, and intentional purchasing — and connect it to actionable steps such as buying used, avoiding overconsumption of fast fashion, repairing items, researching quality, resetting mindset, educating others, and donating to Goodwill.

Friday 4/24

It’s Not Easy Being Green presented by Alison Kwok (University of Oregon)

Alison Kwok is a Professor Emerita for the Department of Architecture at the University of Oregon, where she also serves as Director of the NetZED Case Study Lab. She holds a PhD and MArch from The University of California, Berkeley, a MEd from the University of Hawaii, and a BA from Knox College. Her work has focused on the public’s comfort and health in relation to the built environment, net zero energy design, and the integration of stages of the design process. During this session, she will share case studies illustrating the challenges of aligning design intentions with real‑world performance — and what it takes to close that gap.