IES Light For Life® Virtual Symposium 2025: Sustainability

Alexandra is an architect and Sustainability Leader at HMFH, where her expertise in topics from embodied carbon to material health and efficient lighting systems keeps the firm at the forefront of sustainable school design.
Alexandra creates healthy learning environments that support student well-being, both through her project work and industry-wide advocacy for material health and transparency. She recently co-authored the Lighting Advocacy Letter, a national initiative to establish sustainable lighting products as the industry standard and has held numerous roles within IES, including as Board member of the Boston Section and Co-Chair of the IES Sustainable Lighting Committee.

AIA, WELL AP, LEED AP BD+C, LFA

Melissa Mattes, IALD, LC, LEED Green Associate, Living Future Ambassador, is a senior lighting designer/sustainability specialist with Sladen Feinstein Integrated Lighting. In 2020, Mattes was named one of Lighting Magazine’s international class of “Top 40 Under 40” lighting designers, and in 2021, began leading the IES Sustainable Lighting Committee as co-chair.

Mark Loeffler, IES, IALD, LEED Fellow retired from active consulting at the end of 2021 and now serves as a co-founder and curator of LightJustice.org Based in Connecticut, he dedicated more than thirty years to designing joyful, invigorating, healthful, and sustainable architectural lighting for notable academic, healthcare, research, corporate, institutional, and recreational buildings in the US and around the world. Currently, he serves on the IES Sustainability Committee as an advisory member. During his career, Mark has written, taught, and lectured widely which he plans to continue, especially in his advocacy for lighting’s role in social and environmental justice.

As Principal & CEO of Reed Burkett Lighting Design, Lisa J. Reed contributes thoughtful passion for lighting and a spirit of collaboration to her projects. She delights in bringing spaces to life with quality lighting, and concern for the environment influences her work.

Lisa is an award-winning lighting designer with 30 years of experience, ranging from energy management to electrical engineering to lighting design. Her project history includes millions of square feet of commercial space, hotels and resorts from coast to coast, houses of worship, museums, parks, and healthcare facilities. Lisa is an advocate for diversity in lighting, and she is focused on creating a better workplace for women, parents, and all people.

In 2024, CREW-St. Louis recognized her with their inaugural Sustainability & Wellness Impact award.

C. Brooke Silber is a Principal and Director at BR+A’s Borealis Lighting Studio housed in the New York City Office. Brooke has over 25 years of experience as an architectural and landscape lighting designer with a passion for large-scale public and private projects. Her award-winning portfolio features a diversity of project types including; healthcare, historic preservation, corporate interiors, civic buildings, academic institutions, security command centers,  transportation facilities, museums, retail, hospitality, religious, and residential.

Brooke received her Master of Science in Lighting from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lighting Research Center and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Syracuse University in Interior Design. She is a Lighting Certified Professional and a LEED Accredited Professional. In addition to her involvement in the joint IES/Avixa ANSI standard committee for Lighting for Videoconferencing and Multi-media Spaces; she is a part-time faculty at Parsons The New School of Constructed Environments for their Master’s program in Lighting. Brooke is an active member of IES and is a frequent speaker at many industry events such as LEDucation and Lightfair.

With over fifteen years of experience leading sustainable building programs, Tanya is passionate about sharing practical steps toward a sustainable future. Tanya is a Director, Sustainable Buildings Team Lead at JLL, leading a team of subject matter experts and providing sustainability advisory services and solutions across the commercial real estate landscape. Previous to JLL, Tanya was the Leader of Sustainability Standards at Perkins Eastman. Tanya serves on the AIA Materials Pledge Working Group (co-chair 2023-2024), the LEED MR TAG, the IWBI Materials Advisory, and was a catalyst member of the mindful Materials AEC Forum. Tanya has several publications advocating for more holistic material selection and has extensive experience speaking at leading industry forums such as Greenbuild, AIA Conference on Architecture & Design, NeoCon, AIA International, and Metropolis symposiums. Tanya is deeply committed to achieving climate, wellness, and equity goals at scale in the built environment.

Wenting leads sustainable design for HOK’s Northeast practice, championing innovation and advancing building projects that prioritize energy efficiency and occupant well-being. Her diverse portfolio spans global work in aviation, healthcare, justice, corporate offices, laboratories, and education. Wenting has played a critical role in pioneering projects, including the first carbon-neutral ready university campus in China, and the world’s first LEED v4 Gold certified airport terminal. In addition to her practice, Wenting teaches as a part-time faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She also contributes to the evolution of green building standards as a member of the U.S. Green Building Council’s National LEED Technical Advisory Group.

Chris Fournier is a Technical Policy Manager for Signify. In this role, he focuses on the development of sustainability topics including LCA, EPD, and material transparency. He serves on the Smart EPD North American Luminaire PCR committee. He is a member of the WELL Light Concept Advisory. Previously during his 16 years at Signify, he led the lighting application team, focusing on all aspects of lighting and system design support. He is Lighting Certified from the National Council on Qualifications for the Lighting Professions.

Aurora Jensen is a Senior Manager focused on Low Carbon Buildings at the Carbon Leadership Forum. Her role emphasizes building-scale embodied carbon reduction through research, technical guidance and collaboration. Before joining CLF, Aurora grew and led the Embodied Carbon team at Brightworks Sustainability. She supported clients in understanding and driving down the embodied carbon impacts of their buildings and portfolios through design exploration and procurement. She has led numerous whole-building life cycle assessments (WBLCAs) for LEED and ILFI and published research on the embodied carbon of mass timber buildings. With previous experience in operational energy modeling and evaluating passive strategies, she works to link operational and embodied carbon considerations and consider trade-offs. Aurora also teaches Environmental Design as a part-time faculty member at Parsons School of Design at The New School.

Leela Shanker leads the Design Lab with WAP Sustainability. Synthesizing architectural design, sustainability analytical frameworks and speculative material investigations, the Lab implements strategies that progress decarbonization, circularity and material health in the built environment. Based in New York, with collaborators globally, Shanker and WAP’s team develop pilot initiatives between leading stakeholders from design, manufacturing and real estate. Through the GreenLight Alliance – an international network of lighting professionals progressing industry-led standards, research and advocacy – she founded the Lighting Industry Life Cycle Assessment Incubator while practicing as a lighting designer with consulting engineering firm BR+A. She holds a M.Arch (Hons) and MFA – Lighting Design from Parsons School of Design and Bachelors of Law and Commerce from Sydney University. Shanker continues to advise the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (U.S. Department of Energy) as technical expert to their Life Cycle Assessment and light research team and is a Steering Committee member of the American Institute of Architects’ Decarbonization Subcommittee and Carbon Leadership Forum NY chapters. As Founder of non-profit, Flint Collective NYC Inc, her work has been awarded by the IES with a Special Citation for Lighting as a Tool for Social Impact. She is a current member of the Social Architecture track of the New Museum’s NEW INC incubator.

Scott Roos recently retired as the Vice President, Sustainability & Business Optimization, Specialty Lighting at Acuity Brands.  2025 marked Scott’s 47th year in lighting, a career that encompassed product design, marketing, product management, strategic planning and lighting education. Products Scott has worked on have earned numerous patents and awards including the Industrial Design Excellence Award and LightFair’s Most Innovative Product and Technical Innovation awards. He has also developed the concepts and lighting design for numerous facilities, showrooms and tradeshow booths including the acclaimed Des Plaines, IL Center for Light and Space.  He has always been involved in pushing the envelope for critical topics of the time, from developing the first low voltage accent lighting products in the 80’s to helping advance CFL general illumination downlighting in the 90s to driving the development of the first commercially viable LED track and recessed solutions in the early 2000s.  Most recently Scott has been a grain of sand in the oyster to encourage us to embrace wellness and sustainability as fundamental elements of good lighting and has been a regular speaker on both topics at national and regional industry events.  He is currently serving as a member of the IES Sustainability Committee, which is updating the LP10 Sustainable Lighting Practice document, the NEMA Lighting Sustainability Task Force , the International Electrotechnical Committee (IEC) addressing the Environmental Aspects of Lighting and with Smart EPD to develop the Product Specific Rules for Luminaire Environmental Product Declarations in North America.

Scott has a BFA in Industrial Design from the University of Illinois and an MBA from De Paul University. Scott resides in Glenview, IL a suburb of Chicago.  When Scott is not working, he enjoys traveling, yoga, cooking, walking in nature, writing, advocating for peace and non-violence and spending quality time with his family including his wife Angela, six children, three granddaughters, and close friends.

With more than 20 years of professional lighting design experience, Stacy has carved out a career that focuses on “design-driven solutions” for a notable portfolio that includes the Yas Marina Hotel, in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates and a number of museum projects that incorporate advanced daylighting strategies such as the recently completed Clyfford Still Museum in Denver.

A member of the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) and the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES), Stacy has served on the IALD’s sustainability committee and the education committee of the IES’s New York section. He is also a LEED accredited professional and has served on the USGBC’s LEED Technical Assistance Group for lighting.

Eric Corey Freed is an award-winning architect, author, and global speaker. As Principal and Director of Sustainability for CannonDesign, he leads the healthcare, education, and commercial teams toward low-carbon, healthy, regenerative buildings for over 30 million square feet a year. For two decades, he was Founding Principal of organicARCHITECT, a visionary design leader in biophilic and regenerative design. 

His past roles include Vice President of the International Living Future Institute and Chief Community Officer of EcoDistricts, both nonprofits pushing innovative new paradigms for deep green buildings and communities. He serves on the board of Design Museum Everywhere, whose mission is to “bring the transformative power of design to all.”

Eric is the author of 12 books, including “Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies” and “Circular Economy for Dummies.” In 2012, he was named one of the 25 “Best Green Architecture Firms” in the US, and one of the “Top 10 Most Influential Green Architects.” In 2017, he was named one of Build’s American Architecture Top 25. He’s one of the 2021 Environment + Energy Leaders and in 2024, he was named the Net Zero Trailblazer for Innovation. He holds a prestigious LEED Fellow award from the US Green Building Council.