Prioritizing Health and Safety in Today's Office Buildings

Dana Robbins Schneider is Senior Vice President, Director of Energy and Sustainability for Empire State Realty Trust. Dana is responsible to define, lead and execute a comprehensive program for all company and property level energy and sustainability initiatives and industry leading best practices and to coordinate and develop the company's ESG and wellness programs and reporting. Dana focuses on analyzing and implementing actionable measures which drive energy efficiency and performance at the whole building, systems and tenant level including proactive planning for LL97 and 80X50. We focus on measurable actionable impacts in energy, water, waste and indoor environmental quality to drive ROI and healthy buildings. Prior to joining ESRT, Dana led JLL’s Energy and Sustainability Projects team for the Americas, working on over 250 million square feet of impact projects over 18 years. Before this, Dana was a mechanical engineer at WSP. Dana graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Virginia in 1999 and serves on the Real Estate Roundtable Sustainable Policy Advisory Committee, Urban Green Board of Directors, REBNY Sustainability Committee, USGBC LEED Steering Committee and is a LEED Fellow.  Dana serves on the LL97 Technical Pathways for Commercial Buildings Working Group.

Since joining COOKFOX in 2012, Bethany’s combined knowledge of architecture and interior design has been a valuable asset to a variety of New York City projects. Currently, Bethany is spearheading the transformative design of the Solaire building in Battery Park City and the International WELL Building Institute headquarters at 220 Fifth Avenue. Other recent projects of Bethany’s include the interior design of private homes, a wellness-focused, biophilic high rise in Tampa, FL, and a new building for a private girls’ school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Bethany also designed and orchestrated the design of COOKFOX’s new, award-winning office on 57th Street, and the interiors of 62 Wooster Street, a landmarked 1920s industrial building to a luxury residential property in the heart of SoHo. Among her first projects at COOKFOX were 301 East 50th Street, a pied-à-terre apartment building in Midtown East, two large Brooklyn projects, City Point’s Tower 2, and 535 Carlton Avenue in Pacific Park, an affordable housing development. Bethany frequently speaks on the topics of biophilia and high-performance design at events such as Greenbuild and the New York Green Building Conference. Additionally, Bethany teaches a sustainability studio course at the New York School of Interior Design and regularly serves as a guest juror at Columbia University and the Pratt Institute. Bethany and her work have been featured in publications such as Interior Design Magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and others. Prior to joining COOKFOX, Bethany designed interiors for Space Architects and Gensler where she focused on a range of projects including workplace interiors, New York retail spaces for Italian fashion houses, and private homes in the Hamptons. Having spent her childhood in the seemingly disparate locales of Tokyo, Japan, and rural Iowa, Bethany has found that a common thread in her design philosophy is that she holds the utmost respect for the natural environment. At COOKFOX, Bethany brings this thinking to her projects as she pursues environmentally responsible design. Education Columbia GSAPP; New York, NY, Masters of Architecture, 2012 Pratt Institute; Brooklyn, NY, BFA in Interior Design with Minor in Art History, 2008 Rhode Island School of Design; Providence, RI, Pre-Graduate Studies in Graphic Design & Fine Arts, 2004

Gayathri Unnikrishnan serves as the Concept Lead for Light at the International WELL Building Institute . As the subject matter expert in lighting for IWBI, Gayathri focuses on the impact of light on the well-being of occupants in the built environment by translating research into implementable strategies for the Light Concept in the WELL Building Standard. As Vice President of Standard Development at IWBI, she leads standard development and as well as market transformation processes for the 10 WELL concepts. WELL is being applied in over 4,000 projects in 600+ million square feet across 63 countries. She was recently named one of Lighting Magazine’s 40 under 40 for the class of 2020.

Jaclyn Whitaker serves as Senior Vice President within the Commercial Team for the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), where she leads a team of highly proficient experts in WELL requirements, feature intentions and the certification process with an emphasis on WELL coaching – project-specific technical support offered to teams toward successful WELL certification. Beyond continuously developing solutions to overcome challenges and general technical WELL resources, Jaclyn’s team leads the effort of international technical expansion of the WELL Building Standard, including determining overlaps with global green building standards. Jaclyn is instrumental in the IWBI membership and WELL Portfolio Provider program development and operations. Prior to joining IWBI, Jaclyn brought extensive sustainability design and consulting experience with a focus on wellness design to Delos as Director of Project Management. Within the Delos Project Management team, Jaclyn worked closely with design, construction and owner teams to incorporate the WELL Building Standard into projects as well as managed the build-out of the WELL Living Lab on the campus of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Previously, Jaclyn led the sustainability department of the New York City architectural firm HLW, providing LEED, sustainability and wellness consulting for HLW projects and has certified many LEED for New Construction, Commercial Interiors and Higher Education projects. Prior to HLW, Jaclyn gained valuable custom residential design experience as a member of Brooklyn firm Nandinee Phookan Architects and Chicago firm Burns + Beyerl Architects. Jaclyn is a licensed architect and is a graduate of the University of Kentucky School of Architecture.