Greenbuild India, Human X Nature the
flagship event for sustainability professionals

Rick Fedrizzi joined the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) as chairman and CEO in Nov. 2016, bringing his global environmental track record and keen business insight to IWBI’s work to advance human health through better buildings and communities. With nearly 200 million square feet registered and certified in 35 countries, IWBI’s evidence-based WELL Building Standard is the premier system for advancing, measuring and monitoring real estate features that help people thrive, what Rick describes as the “second wave” of sustainability.

Rick is also founding chair of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and former CEO of both USGBC and of Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI), nonprofit organizations that promote high-performing buildings and communities. During his tenure, LEED became the world’s most widely used green building rating system.

Rick co-founded USGBC while serving as the environmental marketing officer at UTC’s Carrier Corporation, where he served for more than 25 years. A native of Syracuse, N.Y., with an MBA from Syracuse U., he serves on numerous boards and advisory councils, including View, Inc., Global Green and Enterprise Community Partners Health Advisory Council. A sought-after speaker and thought leader, his book Greenthink: How Profit Can Save the Planet won a prestigious EPPY Award for Public Affairs in 2015.

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Anyone who thinks they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, live in a bamboo house isn’t thinking like Ibuku Founder and Creative Director Elora Hardy. The Bali-raised, one-time fashion designer left a career in New York fashion to carry on the phenomenal work of the design-build team behind Bali’s world-renowned Green School, an eco-positive international school campus with over 40 structures built entirely from bamboo.

At Ibuku, Elora leads a team of highly skilled, locally trained architects, engineers, designers and artisans and the result is collaborative and groundbreaking: astounding and aspirational bamboo-crafted homes and structures that step outside of the conventions of architecture as we know it.

Sustainable, culturally connected, tradition-defying, these innovative structures inspire a respect for craftsmanship and encourage technology to back up, rather than always derive, design. Through their uncompromising commitment, IBUKU is making an impact on the culture of innovation. IBUKU is championing bamboo because if we can build palaces from grass, then what else is possible?

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Dr. Vandana Shiva is trained as a Physicist and did her Ph.D. on the subject “Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory” from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. She later shifted to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy, which she carried out at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore. In 1982, she founded an independent institute, the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in Dehra Dun dedicated to high quality and independent research to address the most significant ecological and social issues of our times, in close partnership with local communities and social movements.

In 1991, she founded Navdanya, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed, the promotion of organic farming and fair trade. In 2004 she started Bija Vidyapeeth, an international college for sustainable living in Doon Valley in collaboration with Schumacher College, U.K. Dr. Shiva combines the sharp intellectual enquiry with courageous activism.

Time Magazine identified Dr. Shiva as an environmental “hero” in 2003 and Asia Week has called her one of the five most powerful communicators of Asia. Forbes magazine in November 2010 has identified Dr. Vandana Shiva as one of the top Seven most Powerful Women on the Globe. Dr. Shiva has received honorary Doctorates from University of Paris, University of Western Ontario, University of Oslo and Connecticut College, University of Guelph. Among her many awards are the Alternative Nobel Prize (Right Livelihood Award, 1993), Order of the Golden Ark, Global 500 Award of UN and Earth Day International Award. Lennon ONO grant for peace award by Yoko Ono in 2009, Sydney Peace Prize in 2010, Doshi Bridgebuilder Award, Calgary Peace Prize and Thomas Merton Award in the year 2011,the Fukuoka Award and The Prism of Reason Award in 2012 , the Grifone d’Argento prize 2016 and The MIDORI Prize for Biodiversity 2016.

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