Climate Action Planning (The Verb): Promising Practices for Climate-Positive Work - 1.25 PDH (LA CES/HSW)

Recorded On: 10/06/2024

The urgency of the biodiversity and climate crises requires fast and strategic response. Climate action won't happen on its own: firms must create roadmaps to operationalize and implement climate action. This session explores approaches and provides lessons in creating climate action plans at three firms of differing sizes and geographies.

Learning objectives:

Contextualize the work of landscape architects in the face of the dual climate and biodiversity crises.
Explain the value of creating a strategic document (climate action plan, sustainability action plan, project performance plan) to operationalize climate action, and what it means to "operationalize climate action."
Describe strategies for a successful climate action planning process for your firm that encourages participation, builds excitement, and establishes a vision.
Understand ideas for implementing climate action, such as what and how to track, how to encourage internal leadership, and how to address and close common skill gaps.

Bonnie Roy, ASLA

Managing Partner

SWT Design, Inc.

Having joined SWT Design originally as a student intern, Bonnie boasts over two decades of experience in leading diverse teams. Bonnie became a partner in 2012, and her primary focus centers on strategic systems planning and fostering community engagement, particularly spearheading several of the company's transformative urban projects. Additionally, Bonnie oversees the firm's Human Resources department. Bonnie’s core passion revolves around delivering economically and environmentally responsible design solutions to the company’s diverse clients. Bonnie helped to lead the development of SWT's Design Performance Plan and continues to spearhead its implementation today.

Dorothy Faris, ASLA

Partner

Mithun

Dorothy has worked on a variety of public and private projects across the Western United States. Her ability to think across scales—from master planning large sites to specifics of construction details—informs her project work. She values collaboration from the beginning of the project, working closely with the architecture and interiors team, consultants and stakeholders, to assure a seamless blending of site, structure and community. With a background in ceramics and art history, her concept driven approach aims to reveal stories of a place, celebrate ecological function and generate community life through the creation of great civic spaces.

Sarah Fitzgerald, ASLA

Landscape Designer

SWA Group

Sarah is passionate about leveraging landscape design to better address the climate crisis, and advocates for the necessity of landscape architects’ voices in shaping environmental policies, Her research and project work foregrounds embodied carbon, low-impact development (LID), and sustainable design solutions that are sensitive to their ecological and social contexts. She is an active volunteer with ASLA and was a co-author of the recent ASLA Climate Action Plan.