Paula Melton on green building knowledge and education

Design the Future

Paula Melton is the Editorial Director at BuildingGreen, which supports the international sustainable building movement with learning resources, community building, and other services. She works with editorial teams to develop and deliver webcasts, long-form analysis, and other guidance on BuildingGreen.com and LEEDuser.com.

“We have problems that are caused by people being in silos,” Paula says, “and not being able or willing to communicate. We need to be thinking about people skills and processes in new ways.” She adds that progress in the movement really demands a lot of soft skills. “We are all engaged in change management as much as we are engaged in the mechanics of our specific discipline or sector.”

Besides bringing deep knowledge and humor to the table, Paula is optimistic, despite being rooted firmly in a lot of data about the reality of the climate imperative and the challenges that face the built environment community. “We are asking the right questions and beginning to break down those barriers that have given us 75 different net zero standards,” she says. “We're having the right conversations, and I'm excited about that.”