Oct. 20, 2025 (WASHINGTON) – Today, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the leading authority on green building, announced six recipients of its 2025 USGBC Leadership Awards. The annual awards recognize organizations and individuals whose exemplary work has been influential in the expansion of sustainable, high-performing buildings and communities.

The USGBC Leadership Awards honor industry trailblazers who have been at the forefront of USGBC’s movement to transform the built environment and lead the way in making best practices standard across the building industry. The 2025 recipients have a track record of leadership in driving innovation, education, and performance to scale green building and accelerate market transformation.

“This year’s awardees are a testament to leadership with vision and purpose. They represent the very best of what our movement can achieve,” said Peter Templeton, president and CEO of USGBC. “As we confront the climate challenges ahead, their relentless commitment to sustainable building is helping advance our industry and inspire others to take meaningful steps toward a more sustainable and resilient future.”

This year, USGBC has introduced a new award – the inaugural Emerging Leader award – to recognize and elevate a new wave of changemakers who are making a meaningful impact today while shaping the future of the green building movement. It will be given to an individual with up to 10 years of professional experience who has demonstrated early leadership in their field.

The Emerging Leader recipient will be announced during the USGBC Leadership Awards Celebration on Wednesday, Nov. 5, in conjunction with the annual Greenbuild International Conference & Expo, the largest gathering of green building industry leaders and experts. The winner will be recognized on the main stage along with the other awardees. The evening gala is open to 2025 Greenbuild conference attendees.

Leadership Award for Organizational Excellence

The Leadership Award for Organizational Excellence is given to outstanding organizations whose vision, leadership and commitment have significantly advanced the green building industry. This year’s recipients are:

•  Catalyst Partners, a collaborative team of credentialed professionals committed to high-performance and regenerative design protocols for buildings, interiors, landscapes, and products, has been a local and national leader in sustainability and an engaged member of the USGBC community for decades. The company’s work supporting high-performance buildings – including on more than 100 LEED-certified projects – positively impacts communities and proves the business case for sustainably designed and operated buildings. Additionally, Catalyst team members have served in key volunteer leadership roles, contributing to the evolution of standards and the adoption of green building practices across the industry.
•  Arup, a global built environment consultancy providing advisory and technical expertise across more than 150 disciplines, has led the way in making positive connections between the built and natural worlds, advancing design and engineering solutions that benefit both human and environmental well-being. Its pioneering work on decarbonization, resilience, biodiversity, circularity, and health has transformed industry practice by embedding sustainability as a core principle of world-class buildings.
• Cindy Jacobs, Jean Lupinacci, Jon Passe, and Michael Zatz are former civil servants and leaders at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR commercial, residential, and industrial programs. They were instrumental in creating the foundation for transformative energy and emissions reductions across the industry. Today, ENERGY STAR tools are used to measure and optimize the energy performance of more than one quarter of all U.S. commercial space, and hundreds of thousands of homes are being built to the ENERGY STAR standard. The ENERGY STAR program and its partners have collectively prevented 4 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions and saved Americans more than $500 billion in energy costs.