Laura Steinbrink

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What is your educational background?

I received my Bachelor’s degree in Government from Colby College in Maine, and continued to earn my MBA in sustainable business at Green Mountain College in Vermont.

What strengths do you bring to the Emerald team?

As the company’s visionary, I thrive on designing new realities. Our clients bring us opportunities – to help them achieve a certification goal, to create a strategy that leads to real change, or that helps them answer tough questions. I can see the future and help people bring their skills to the table to create the solution.

Prior to starting Emerald, I had a career in the non-profit world, where I worked with community leaders and facilitated stakeholder engagement. Those experiences prepared me for what I do today, which is to facilitate our team, and our client teams, to set and achieve goals.

I enjoy opportunities to facilitate sustainability charrettes with broad stakeholder groups. I thrive on executive leader strategy sessions that align the owner’s business and financial objectives with their renovation and new construction projects. In both of these examples, I am able to apply my strengths of conceptualizing solutions, promoting alternatives and realigning objectives.

What are your professional affiliations?

Emerald is a corporate member of the U.S. Green Building Council as well as an individual member in Ohio and Arkansas. I serve on the Leadership Team for the Northeast Ohio USGBC. I also belong to Conscious Capitalism and the Society of Sustainability Professionals.

What is your proudest project moment, and why?

I like to stretch people’s thinking and help people see other ways to shared visions of a more sustainable future. When we persuaded reviewers at GBCI to reverse position on initial interpretations for how to evaluate the energy model outputs for the first e-waste processing facility in the United States, I definitely felt proud. This robust credit interpretation ruling, which took part in writing and through phone discussions, led us to not only achieve LEED Silver certification for that facility, it also paved the way for us to be prepared to argue on behalf of the first steel production facility that applied for LEED certification. Another proud moment was celebrating the LEED Certification for Big River Steel!

What is one fun fact about yourself?

I'm learning the RV life with my sustainable skoolie named SolBus. She's a 1991 38' International Blue Bird converted to a mobile home. Her house power is 100% solar generated, is insulated with recycled denim, is finished internally with beetle-kill pine, and comes complete with a composting toilet.