January, 2013    

Dear Friends & Colleagues,

On behalf of the Board and staff of WGBA we hope your New Year has gotten off to a great start. We have plenty of exciting things in store for you in 2013, with new and improved classes, presentations, and opportunities for you to contribute in many areas. For WGBA, 2012 was a come-back year for programming. This year the focus will be on getting our house in order. The work we are doing internally on operations, process and procedure will streamline the process of engaging with WGBA at all levels; Board, staff, committee and member. I look forward to keeping you updated as we make progress on these important initiatives.

 We are starting 2013 with four great new Board members, whose photos and details are listed below. Please take the time to review their information and consider an opportunity to volunteer with WGBA yourself. Jacqueline, Rex, Kate, and Paul are professionals just like you. They work either in the field of sustainable building and design or they are working towards building partnerships within it. I was very inspired when I first met Jacqueline Ward earlier this year when she called to volunteer for the conference. Jacqueline is the Executive Director of Business Improvement District #32 in Milwaukee. Her interest in volunteering with WGBA came from her desire to connect the African American business owners in her District with knowledge and training about sustainability in the built environment. Jacqueline not only gave an entire day to volunteer at our conference, she is now sitting on our Board of Directors!

Another inspiring story of one of our volunteers this year comes from our Southwest Co-Chair in Madison, Rick Milburn. USGBC was after me for months to get a group to create the WI regional priority credits for LEED v.4. After many e-mails and calls, I could not get the original group to finish. With two months to go until the deadline, Rick Milburn answered my call for new volunteers to finish the Wisconsin credits. Rick quickly led a small group of volunteers to review the work, collect the missing data and reported-out to USGBC. Jacqueline and Rick and all of our other great volunteers that led similar charges for WGBA this year are Champions. If you think you could be a WGBA Champion, or you simply want to help one out, let us know! Click here for more information.

More to come,

Nick Mueller - WGBA Board President

Korrine Haeffel - WGBA Board Vice President

Sherrie Gruder - WGBA Secretary

 is a Sustainable Design Specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Extension and provides statewide education and technical assistance on green building, sustainable community development, energy conservation and renewable energy. Sherrie is a LEED Accredited Professional and served two terms on USGBCs Government Core Committee. Sherrie has served on the technical advisory committee of the Wisconsin Green Built Home Program, the renewable energy board of the Wisconsin Focus on Energy Program and the Energy Independent Communities grant program. She develops education resources on topics including zero net energy, government green building programs, WI LEED certified projects and green building products. Sherrie has been on the WGBA Board since 2010.

New to the Board: Please WELCOME!

Rex Loker,  The passive solar and ecology movements of the 70's struck a chord in his psyche and ignited his interest in what has evolved into the amorphous "sustainability" movement. More recently, participation in a graduate certificate program broadened his conceptual framework of sustainability to include culture, social structure & social equity relative to quality of life. Sustainability's notion of interdependence linking seemingly unrelated interests, scales, locations, sectors, classes and systems of all sorts was increasingly coming into focus for him, just as it has for more & more fields of study.

Jacqueline A. Ward Is currently the Executive Director of an emerging Community Development Corporation and manages a Milwaukee Business Improvement District. She has experience and knowledge in both for-profit and non-profit management. She works to see more central city communities connected to not only green building practices, but environmental practices as well. Jacqueline has also been at the helm of a couple of notable non-profit organizations including the Milwaukee Jobs Initiative (no longer in existence) that was started by The Center on Wisconsin Strategies (COWS) the originators of the ME2 program. 

Kate M. Nelson is the Environmental Sustainability Coordinator of UW-Milwaukee for the past five years. She is responsible for building the program to address campus energy conservation strategies, stormwater management, expansive recycling programs, sustainable purchasing and urban gardening. Previously, Kate was a GIS specialist and project assistant for The Conservation Fund, and worked to preserve and restore critical land areas for MMSD's Greenseams program. Kate holds a BA in Conservation and Environmental Science from UW-Milwaukee as well as a previous BA in Theatre and Writing from Cardinal Stritch University. She is active in AASHE as well as its STARS program.

Paul Poblocki is currently a Marketing Strategy Manager for Johnson Controls Energy Solutions business where he helps develop and support the marketing strategy for key vertical markets. In this role he helps drive horizontal offerings such as water efficiency and renewable energy into the vertical market sales organization through awareness-building and educational efforts. Paul holds an MBA degree in marketing and information systems from the University of Colorado and a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from Marquette University. Currently, he resides as Past-President of Marquette University's Business School Alumni Association and is an active member of Marquette's Mentor Program.

Speaker Presentations

Renewable Energy Biodigester Tour

Presented by: Brian Kermath

Date: January 24,2013

Time: 2:00 - 4:00 PM

Location: UW Oshkosh

800 Algoma Boulevard, Oshkosh, WI 54901

REGISTER 

Building Monitoring and Controls

Presented by: Don Albinger

Date: February 12, 2013

Time: 5:30-7:30 PM

Location: Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI

REGISTER