Unlocking the Power of Certifications: A Conversation with Rick Fedrizzi
An Episode from the Changing Tomorrow Podcast
In a recent installment of the Liveable podcast, we were honored to host a conversation with Rick Fedrizzi, a pioneer in the realm of building certifications. From his instrumental efforts in establishing the LEED certification to his role as the Executive Chairman of the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), Fedrizzi's influence is felt across the globe. Here, we delve into key insights from the conversation that can benefit any organization looking to elevate their impact—be it through higher brand value, engaged employees, or a loyal customer base.
Resource Workbook
For every podcast episode, we've meticulously curated a unique workbook to dive deeper into its themes. Unlock advanced insights, strategize, and catalyze change tailored to each discussion. Download the Changing Tomorrow Episode Workbook here.
The Importance of Certifications
Rick Fedrizzi highlighted how certifications, like WELL and LEED, serve as benchmarks of quality and sustainability. They provide a structured framework to guide businesses in making informed decisions. With rapid technological advancements and an ever-changing social landscape, certifications offer a degree of stability. As Fedrizzi puts it, "Technology advances every single minute. Science advances every single minute. Laws and economics advance every single minute. So those questions need to be updated every single minute in a way that's conducive to running your business."
A Human-Centric Approach
Fedrizzi's philosophy doesn't just focus on environmental or corporate outcomes; it's deeply human-centric. The WELL Building Standard, for instance, is designed to foster well-being and improve health. Rick expresses concern about the next generation and their quality of life, saying, "What scares the hell out of me is thinking who's going to write on that page and what they're going to write for the next 90 years of their lives."
This ties back to one of Liveable's core tenets—employee well-being, which is a part of our unique 5P Method that also includes product sustainability, healthy locations, philanthropy, and fair supply chain practices. Fedrizzi's insights resonate strongly with our philosophy, reminding us that people are at the heart of every organization.
The Beauty of Incremental Progress
The conversation also delved into the transformative power of small steps, another notion that echoes Liveable's mission. According to Rick, it's about "Wanting to do a little better than we did yesterday and keep moving forward. And that I think is the beauty of the world we live in and something we're never gonna give up on."
This idea fits seamlessly with our focus on engaged employees and a loyal customer base, advocating that incremental changes can bring about a more extensive transformation—leading to a business that is recognized as being for good.
Takeaway
Rick Fedrizzi's insights offer a valuable roadmap for businesses seeking to make a meaningful impact. The role of certifications, a human-centric approach, and the magic of incremental changes—these elements together create a blueprint for success that aligns perfectly with Liveable's mission and methods.
Certifications aren't just badges to be collected but are dynamic tools for driving change. As we continue to help our clients achieve higher brand value, engaged employees, and a loyal customer base, the wisdom shared by Fedrizzi serves as a rich source of inspiration and guidance.
We invite you to listen to the full podcast episode for a more comprehensive understanding of these topics. The ultimate takeaway? To make your business a catalyst for positive change, keep your eye on certifications, put people first, and never underestimate the power of small steps.
Rick’s Reading List
Resource Workbook
For every podcast episode, we've meticulously curated a unique workbook to dive deeper into its themes. Unlock advanced insights, strategize, and catalyze change tailored to each discussion. Download the Changing Tomorrow Episode Workbook here.
Complete Podcast Transcript
Gayathri (00:01.708)
Rick, are you ready for this?
rick (00:04.146)
I am ready and excited. Thank you for having me.
Gayathri (00:07.464)
We're super excited to dive in. Okay, let's start with this. If you had a superpower, what would it be?
rick (00:17.21)
Superpower. You know, I think my, and it's not my own opinion, I've had other people tell me that I have some extreme empathy in the way that I conduct myself, in the way that I deal with others. I actually love people. I love meeting people. I love sharing.
uh hopes, dreams, fears, and discussing things with them. Uh, when I meet new people, um, I truly am interested in them and what they have to say. And I hear so many people today talk about a world in which people don't listen to each other, people don't have time for each other, and you know, to me it's, it's almost
the opposite. It's like we only have one life here and the ability for us to share these moments human to human and understand each other and provide what kind of experiences and wisdom you might have and be open to accepting and hearing what wisdom and experience others have.
And so I don't know if it's a superpower or not, but I think we live in a world where there's not enough of it. So the more people take time to make others feel comfortable and accepted, I think that's an important power to have these days, for sure.
Gayathri (01:55.048)
Rick, having worked with you for so many years, I am yet to meet a person who can walk into a room and make everybody feel comfortable with just by your presence. So yes, that is truly a superpower. I agree.
rick (02:05.146)
Oh.
Thank you. That's very thoughtful. I appreciate that.
Gayathri (02:11.604)
Okay, so let's talk about sustainability. Your work in sustainability has left a huge mark on the world. LEED has forever changed how we look at buildings and the role that buildings played in the built environment. And now we're doing the same, or rather, IWBI and you are doing the same with the Well Building standard. For our listeners who may not be familiar, can you talk a little bit about the power and impact of certifications?
rick (02:14.606)
Sure.
rick (02:40.77)
Oh, sure. You know, it's really funny that I've spent the last maybe 30 years of my career fighting for certifications. And when I started, I had no idea the importance of them and why they mattered. We developed a certification for the US Green Building Council's focus on sustainable buildings, primarily to educate the public on why.
these buildings mattered and how you might identify them. I mean, in the very earliest days of green building, a green building was identified by, oh, it has maybe high performance lighting in it. There was not a lot of other identifiable, you really couldn't identify that the glass was better.
or that the materials were better, or that the building used less water. And so the idea that you would get a developer or a homeowner to pay for the kind of improvements that were necessary, how could you ask them to do that without some verification of what they were getting involved with in the first place? So we looked at different industries and we found out that the way that you verify these things,
to a potential customer is through a certification, a verification of a process that has been put in place to give a distinct score to how that part of the equation is working. In buildings, we focused primarily on energy, water, waste, materials, toxins, the things that are important to a building.
And I remember, Gayatri, the earliest days when I would tell that to a developer. And they would say, building code doesn't make me do that. I don't know why I have to do that. That's going to cost me more money. So I don't want any part of it. And I would actually go into my meetings with them and I would bring a 99 cent box of animal crackers.
rick (05:01.462)
You know, the little pretty Barnum and Bailey box. It's a red box with little animals on the side. Well, if you turn it to the other side, there is a nutrition label. And the idea that this little 99 cent box of crackers has been certified. And inside that where it's this much carbohydrates, this much sugar, this much protein, all of the elements that you might want to know.
Gayathri (05:03.869)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
rick (05:29.854)
if you're concerned about health, if you're concerned about something. And I would say to the developer, if you can certify a 99 cent box of crackers, why would you not certify a 99 million dollar building? And they thought that was clever. And until we were able to convince maybe three or four large projects that began not only to get the certification,
but to advertise the idea that certification was an important part of this project and the customer was in fact getting what they paid for. In that certification process, we did a couple of things. The world of certification, there's three main things that are important. Number one, it's improved market access. So what you're saying is through increased trust and recognition, you are actually getting more of the market to accept
the products and the services that you offer. Through that, you get the second important thing, which is the increased customer confidence. The customer actually looks at this third party certification and says, you know, I think that's the kind of home I would like or the building I would like or the product I would wanna buy. And third is the increased product awareness. You know, without these elements being looked at in the public domain,
there would actually be no way to discern what the product is doing or not. And when you have the discussions with people, it's very easy to say that we live in a world where you would never get on an airplane, that the manufacturer of that airplane was it through a variety of certification bodies guaranteeing that.
The steel is the right quality, the aluminum is the right quality, that the electronics are not going to burn in flight, that all of these things have been tested. That's our customer confidence and why certifications matter. But you don't have to be on an airplane. You can look at the back of a cup of yogurt, yogurt that grows bacteria and should be a beneficial strain to us as humans. You want to verify that on the side of the label. It says why it's safe.
Gayathri (07:43.841)
Mm-hmm.
rick (07:50.41)
why it's healthy, why it will be what you purchased in the first place. So that's kind of a long-winded way of saying why certifications are important. But I, I went from being someone, I wasn't a non-believer, but I didn't know about them. I didn't care about them to someone who is, um, I would say, uh, vehemently supportive of the world of certification because we, we can only trust science.
We can only trust data, and that information will help us make better decisions all along the way.
Gayathri (08:28.656)
Thank you for that explanation. And to your point, science and data, we can trust it and we can share it across in a language that is understandable by folks in the building, people working on the building. So certifications is absolutely necessary and essential and it's also a great communication tool. So thank you so much for your examples of the different.
ways that we interact with certifications in our life and we don't even know it. And that's something to keep an eye out for next time we go shopping for fruits and pick up that organic apple. Rick, you mentioned the early adopters. You mentioned that, you know, LEED, the developers were not believers in LEED and certifications.
rick (09:05.454)
Yeah
Gayathri (09:21.376)
You won three or USGPC won three or four major projects. Can we talk a little bit about apologies for that?
Gayathri (09:35.196)
Can you tell us a little bit about the perks and the challenges the early adopters may have faced?
rick (09:46.062)
Sure, I think in the beginning, when you are making the decision to... Okay, so at that point, building code gave you the law. It says if you do this, you are not breaking the law. If you don't do this, you are breaking the law. And that's pretty much what developers lived by. They just thought that if I have building code...
Gayathri (09:59.045)
Mm-hmm.
rick (10:13.122)
This is telling me what I have to do and everything I do will be to that line. Then we introduced LEED. LEED was all about breaking that line and creating a structure where people had the ability to perform above code percentages above code, 20, 30, 50, 70% performance above code.
And in the early times, people were like, well, that's going to cost me too much money. I don't want to do it. We're not going to do it. But some innovative, creative, uh, early adopter leadership organizations, I will mention the Durst organization in New York city, they decided that it was a smart thing to do because they could market that percentage advancement to their customers. They could say, don't you want to work in a.
Gayathri (11:09.282)
Mm-hmm.
rick (11:13.074)
in a building that has 30% or 50% better air quality, where the energy use has been cut by two thirds in what you would have spent anyway, that your productivity of employees will probably improve, that you'll use less water and therefore not have as much of a burden on the municipal water systems.
All of those things kind of turned into an argument that these buildings, green buildings, performed better. And as a result, they would be a better investment for corporations. It also started to even connect into what, today we call it ESG reporting. Back then it was just their annual sustainability report. A lot of companies didn't have something to discuss.
in their annual sustainability report, which in those reports were mandated by their board of directors and by, just gave them the ability to say, hey, look at us, we're green. But prior to LEED, prior to the sustainable activities that we now call ESG, the way that people identified their performance was through, well, it was Earth Day and we took our employees out, we planted 300 trees.
You know, 300 of the little tiny saplings that 99% of them were dead three months later. And that was how they measured sustainability. Now with LEED, now with WELL, now with green building standards around the world, like BREEEM and Greenstar, DGNB in Germany, all of these standards now give some, some organizations real
Gayathri (12:41.508)
Mm-hmm.
Gayathri (12:46.266)
Yeah.
rick (13:08.866)
data and real metrics that they can be proud of, that their employees and their board of directors can be proud of. And we at Well and IWBI are taking that much further. And I call it I call that the second wave of sustainability. The first wave of sustainability was planetary health, looking at energy, water, waste, all through the lens of the planet. How do we heal?
the planet, how do we make the planet healthier going forward? Even those standards had a little bit of focus on the human being, but until well, we have taken it 75% further. And we've said, we choose to look at the second wave of sustainability through the lens of the human being, the, the air that we breathe, the light that we see.
that the sounds that we hear, the smells that we ingest, all of these elements of health, the food that we eat, the activity that it's part of our lives, all of these things are so important. So let's make sure when we talk about sustainability, we talk about planetary health, the first wave, and human health and wellness, the second wave of sustainability.
Gayathri (14:29.66)
Rick, can you talk a little bit more about the second wave of sustainability as you see it looking into the future? Specifically, what you're saying, I think we need to spend a little minute, a little second on it, which is looking at the planet and the person not as separate, but together, it's the same conversation. So what do you see coming in the future in terms of
It's already too late. We have a lot of work to do. And there is a lot to be done on both the social side and the climate side in terms of equity and sustainability. And I do think that the second wave of sustainability can support and address both. Can I ask you, what do you see coming in the future? What do you think is necessary for us to do today to address the need for sustainability?
rick (15:11.97)
Sure.
Gayathri (15:26.731)
the second wave of sustainability.
rick (15:29.058)
Sure. You know, to do that, I have to talk just a brief second about the first wave again. So in the first wave, sustainability, everybody was out there with the idea, save the planet. And the idea of saving the planet, by association, you would save the people. And some people like Paul Hawken even early on said, you don't have to worry about the planet. In another couple of million years, the planet will heal itself.
the people, the human beings will be extinct and gone. And we kind of were like, you know, fully aware of how scary that sounded, but we thought, oh, that'll never happen. Let's worry about the planet. We live in a world today where we can see that we, I won't say I'm not pessimistic enough to say we have lost the battle of the planet, but what I will say is that we let it go so far in one direction.
that we now have to shift our focus in a way to the people. How do we keep people healthy? The healthy people are the only ones that hopefully are going to eventually use their intelligence, their collective agreement, their politics and economics to solve the problem of what the planet is facing right now.
But if we have an unhealthy population, in the case of the pandemic, a lot of people were decimated by what the pandemic offered. Maybe that pandemic, I hate to say it, but maybe that was the simple pandemic, the light pandemic. Maybe the next one will be 10 times worse. We don't know. But in the thought of doing that, healthy people need to be protected right now. And how do we do that?
How do we get them to feel healthy, to thrive as a species, to create areas of connection and spread that idea that living in a better world is possible. So with WELL, we identify through certification again, how these buildings perform, how they protect us inside and outside. How we...
rick (17:49.298)
We not only feel and act physically, but how does it make us feel mentally? And in the mental health arena, so many things are connected to that. So many things that also include the areas of equity, diversity, equity, inclusion. How do I feel more connected to my workplace and my coworkers? How am I respected as a human being, no matter what my...
ethnic background is, my sexual orientation, my age. I'm quickly becoming someone who's starting to be aware of my age. And I look at a world, Gayatri, I never saw it before. I really never saw it before. A world in where an aging population is treated less than. And so I will be an advocate in my...
Gayathri (18:41.183)
Oh my gosh.
rick (18:47.494)
growing age to see what I can do to bring that into focus as well. So all of these things are part of making a healthy society and a healthy human being and how we look at the buildings, how we interact with the people that are in those buildings, how we look at the things that keep them up at night, make them feel fearful, make them feel unwanted and change that.
because all of us have a valuable contribution to this world. And if we harness the power of all of these desperate group of people to feel connected in a way that puts the positive work back on healing the planet, we have a chance. But if our groups of people keep running in different directions and keep having the separation seems to be the exciting thing,
not the bringing together, we're going to be in trouble. But I'm a firm believer that as people a lot smarter than me have said, no matter who we are, no matter where we're from on the planet, we are through our genetics, our DNA, we are 99.99% alike. And yet all we choose to do is look at what our differences are. And that's not acceptable.
in the years going forward. We don't have time for that kind of world.
Gayathri (20:21.644)
We don't have time for that kind of world and we need to figure out a way for folks to connect today. And I love how you bring up the importance of connection in the real world, which we have lost a little bit as we are a lot as we move on from the pandemic. One of the things, Rick, that you mentioned was everyone has the same fears when they sleep at night. Very similar fears. And the next day morning, everyone wants to feel
less lonely, wanted, needed, respected. And one of the ways that can be done is through buildings and buildings that are designed for people's health. Can you talk, can you tell us a little bit more on kind of how well can help building owners and developers help facilitate connection in a way or communicate that the building helps with
takes care of them.
rick (21:23.094)
Sure. Yeah, I encourage all of the listeners that are interested to look at, you know, WellCertified.com and look at the case studies and look at the buildings and the spaces that have been done. And it's not just commercial buildings. I mean, there is not only, you know, there are communities that are now WellCertified communities. There are areas of focus on
rick (21:53.408)
We are currently working on a residential home standard. But what you will see in those things are, you know, they're places that are beautifully designed. I mean, that's the first thing that you notice, how beautifully designed they are and how you actually would say to yourself, I want to work in that place. I want to live in that place. If you're a student, you may want to go and learn in that place.
If it's a hospital, you may want to go and heal in that place. All of these places, instead of looking at the way that we used to do it, which was get the building up through a low bid process of construction and pray that it doesn't fall down and move on to the next job. Once again,
We don't have time for that kind of world anymore. And people are much more intelligent than they used to be. We have an educated society. People understand certain hospitals will give their loved ones a better chance of faster recovery than other aging hospitals that have not been invested in. People, excuse me, people understand.
that in certain office buildings, especially today post pandemic, there are employees that will fight tooth and nail to never wanna go back to that building again. And yet there are well-certified spaces where employees are so tired of their cramped little apartments, they can't wait to get back into their offices that are filled with light and good air quality.
and organic snacks and a culture of happiness that permeates the people that work there. Because I'm sorry, if you create the right environment, everyone is happy. If you create the wrong environment, everyone is sad. Everyone is angry. And by creating the right environment, you increase people's mood, which increases their
rick (24:07.706)
energy which makes them want to perform better at their jobs. It gives them feelings of confidence and leadership. It makes them feel connected to the mission of the organization to become the best representatives of that organization. And I will tell anyone that's what a well-certified building will do. It gives you that ability to feel human again and powerful again.
and it's a very, very good thing. And this is the world that we need to advance further every single day. And we need to give better examples of the people that have these amazing experiences. And I would advocate, and I know that...
rick (24:57.835)
IWBI and Rachel Hodgdon, excuse me, who is a, she historically has been an amazing advocate for schools and the ability for schools to perform at a high level so that the children and the teachers in those schools can thrive. And that is probably one of the best things we could ever do. If we wiped everything away right now, let's just keep.
a focus on the schools. Because if children grow up in a world where their health, wellness, mental health is connected to a way that a place is constructed and operated, they won't want anything else the rest of their lives. They will want to go to college in those spaces. They will want to raise family in those houses and apartments. They will want to work in those kinds of buildings. And all of that will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
of success.
Gayathri (25:56.516)
Firstly, shout out to Rachel. Hi, Rachel, if you're listening. I think you touched upon something that's so important, Rick. The power of these buildings is not just on the people who's within it. It impacts the rest of their lives, how they're, what they expect from their homes, what they expect from their kids' schools, what they expect from the hospitals. So there is something so powerful about...
training children or teaching children or having children in spaces that help them thrive so that you're setting them up to have an expectation for spaces for the rest of their lives, for their families, for their co-workers.
rick (26:42.158)
And it's interesting because that child will enter that school and have those amazing experiences. And when they come out, the first thing they won't say is, oh, it's because it was this great school designed and certified by WELL or IWBI. And the reason is they shouldn't. They shouldn't. It should just be a human trait that the...
Buildings and the places we occupy treat us in that positive way. They can know what they will feel themselves, what's good and what's bad. But the idea that space connected so many things that they didn't have to ask for specifically, I can't hear, can I have a better building with active noise cancellation and acoustics? Um, I don't like those smells. Could we increase the ventilation? They don't ever have to say those things.
because the intelligent, healthy building will do that for them.
Gayathri (27:46.2)
It's interesting, I come from the lighting industry and one of the biggest sayings that we have is the best lighting is one that you don't notice. And that is such a powerful way of saying the best buildings are the buildings that you're the most comfortable in are often the ones that you don't, are often looking at factors that we are not even considering, whether it's air quality, sound quality, water quality.
rick (27:55.537)
Mm-hmm.
rick (28:12.223)
Right.
Gayathri (28:13.728)
ability to move around and spaces for connection, daylight, etc. And one thing I love about Well is that those opportunities are provided to everybody, no matter their title, no matter where they're sitting in the building, no matter what is, what their salary is. And this, I mean, I'm completely biased with Well. I will be the first to admit that.
rick (28:23.883)
Yeah.
rick (28:39.276)
Mm-hmm.
Gayathri (28:41.432)
But that is something that is so powerful and also conveys so much by just existing.
rick (28:48.179)
Right. It's funny. You mentioned, you know, you and I both have a friend named Nancy Clanton, who was one of the first lighting engineers I ever met. And she gave me an anecdote that I have been using the rest of my career. She probably gave it to me more than 30 years ago, but I never understood the physiology of the idea that lighting comes from very many different sources in our world.
And if you're a student in a school or a person at a desk, that you have three or four or five different stimulus of lighting, outdoor lighting coming in through the window, overhead lighting, task lighting, computer screen lighting, cell phone lighting. All those different things are going through our optic nerve and reporting back to our brain and letting our brain be the equalizer and balancing all of those things.
And yes, we're amazing, amazing humans that can do that kind of thing through our, through our organs and our brain. And, but the bottom line is at a certain point, and it's usually for me, three o'clock in the afternoon, my brain is giving out, you know, abort messages, alert, abort, it's like too much stimulus.
And I need a break. And, you know, so I've learned myself is usually my break at three o'clock is go take a walk or go get another latte at Starbucks. But ultimately I need to break that cycle, but that's just lighting. And our bodies and our brains are connected with sound in a very similar way.
I've learned that from Ethan and the tremendous, you know, knowledge he has relative to sounds. The idea of olfactory senses, that your memory, apparently olfactory senses are more powerful than any other part of your memory process. And that can be a good thing if you smell lavender in a field in Provence.
Gayathri (30:46.544)
Wow.
Gayathri (30:51.556)
Yeah?
rick (30:54.218)
or can be a very, very horrible thing if you had a terrible smell associated with a terrible experience. And those are the things that we are just dipping our toe in the water of truly understanding all of that. What the good news is, and again, I will talk about wealth. The good thing about wealth is that it takes all of those 10 different features and it starts breaking them down into opportunities to...
support some of the good ones and cancel out some of the bad ones. And all of those things come together in an end product that makes a big difference and I think will continue to make a big difference.
Gayathri (31:36.264)
I did not know that about all factory sensors. I need to read up about it. That is so powerful and just that small tidbit and that research has probably existed for decades at this point, we're just learning about it. That powerful tidbit, if designers and building owners and building operators know.
rick (31:54.151)
Our good friend, Dr. Whitney Austin Gray is the one that gave me that information. And it's really powerful because everyone that I have talked about this to has said, oh my God, that is so true. I remember the most ridiculous things from my past through smell.
Gayathri (31:57.308)
Mm-hmm. Heh heh.
rick (32:16.874)
where my brain would have forgotten the details long ago, but the smell brought me right back to that spot, that moment, and ultimately, it's a pretty interesting phenomenon.
Gayathri (32:28.796)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Rick, we spoke a lot about certifications and what, and the sheer amount of impact it can have on the people inside and also on the people implementing it. But there's a lot of discourse around certifications and a lot of narratives. What is one that you disagree with? What is a belief that you think is false and one that you disagree with?
rick (32:56.402)
You know, I think that, you know, the one thing that I have always said, and I said this with, in the beginning in LEED, and that was the certification that I was closest to at the time. In the beginning, there would be, you know, a variety of credits that I would hear customers come back time and time again saying,
I believe in sustainability. I believe in green building. I believe in LEED. I want to accomplish the highest level of performance, but this credit or that credit or that credit are impossible to achieve. They are driving my team crazy. And I would go to...
Scott Horst or Brendan Owen, and I would say, could we possibly have a credit for common sense? Something that just allowed us to understand that you may have a certain amount of square footage, but having X number of many hundreds or even a thousand spaces for bikes is never going to happen in a city center.
It should never be a square footage calculation that just says you pass or you fail. And ultimately that was my issues related to certification. I think there should never be a brick wall that says pass and fail. I think there should always be a table. And at the table you have a conversation of why are you not able to achieve this.
There's not enough people riding their bikes. Why do I take all the space and use it for that? Well, that's a very good point. Let's have a discussion about that. Let's bring in a few people on our side, on your side, let's have a discussion. Let's see what we can do about that. And I know that LEED has figured out ways to do that. There are ways to move those credits into a healthy discussion. I know it well, we started out.
rick (35:06.922)
with that healthy discussion because we had learned so much in the past in the development of LEED. And I think that's an important point. Because you have a structure and a certification does not mean that the conversation stop then. It should never stop. You should always be sharing, learning, advancing. Technology advances every single minute. Science advances every single minute.
laws and economics advance every single minute. So those questions need to be updated every single minute in a way that's conducive to running your business. But ultimately, I will never believe it's important to turn somebody away from the gate. It's always better to bring them back and find common ground.
Gayathri (35:58.82)
That's a really powerful insight. And in my time running standard development and having reviewed hundreds of these queries, I can tell you everything's a conversation and everything and every building is different and every use case is different. So the bike racks is a great example. If there are public bike racks, or for example, if the building is in a space where in a place where bikes are just not used, you know, that's a conversation to be had.
rick (36:08.835)
everything.
rick (36:24.446)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Gayathri (36:28.284)
That is a really interesting point and then one that I have heard while talking about certifications. Rick, one of the things that I most admire about you is that you're one of the most positive people I know. So I'm going to ask you. I'm going to ask you, what is giving you hope for the future?
rick (36:33.442)
Sure.
rick (36:43.614)
Don't ask my wife about that
rick (36:52.21)
Oh, that's an easy one. But what's hope, the hope I have for the future is my two grandchildren, Reese and Rosamund, and their innocence and beauty, they're kind. And they, you just see it when you're very close to a child, and a lot of us grow up so quickly with our own children, that we often miss, you know, the day-to-day interaction.
But as grandparents, the beauty is you have a little more of that special time with them and you see this blank page. And what I love about it is the purity, the honesty, the innocence of that. What scares the hell out of me is thinking who's going to write on that page and what they're going to write for the next 90 years of their lives. And I guess that's the...
the thing that we all face and that all of our lives have been, and we have to trust the families and the love that we bring to them to guide them through those ups and downs. But that gives me hope. I will, after 25 plus years at US Green Building Council, after my five years of leading IWBI,
Now my next two or three years is taking a back seat as executive chairman, really having the ability to spend more high level time thinking about IWBI and the work we do, but having a lot more time to focus on my grandchildren and my garden and things that really fulfill me as a human being, that is the hopeful part of what's ahead. And that's why...
You know, we're never gonna stop trying to make things work better, trying to make, you know, people listen better, trying to listen better myself to become a more active listener and ultimately just day by day trying to do better. No one will ever have the answer. No stake will be put in the ground that says we won ever. All it is an incremental process where we take day by day.
rick (39:11.722)
wanting to do a little better than we did yesterday and keep moving forward. And that I think is the beauty of the world we live in and something we're never gonna give up on.
Gayathri (39:24.236)
Rick, thank you so much for your time and let's keep moving forward, making incremental progress, spending time with kids and getting our hands dirty in the garden. Those are, I think, very, very actionable steps that everybody can take. Thank you so much for your time and sharing your wisdom.
rick (39:26.486)
Thank you.
rick (39:35.83)
Hahaha!
rick (39:41.158)
Absolutely. Gayatri, thank you so much for all that you do and all the wisdom you impart on people in a way that is just kind and loving and thoughtful. And that's, again, to my first line, that's what makes people want to listen and want to be a part of something.
Gayathri (40:00.668)
Thank you so much, Rick. And that's a wrap!
rick (40:05.131)
Thank you, Gayatri.