Over the next few weeks, we will introduce some of the incredible practitioners, change-makers and innovators who are speaking at Living Future 2021. This week, we are featuring Susan King and Tania Kadakia.
Tania is the Director of Partnerships and Residential Investments at DLR Realty and has dedicated her career to taking part in redeveloping communities and helping low and moderate income people have a good place to live. Susan, a Principal with HED Architects and advocate for sustainable, attainable housing, has been an active participant in the Living Future Affordable Housing Pilot Cohort 3 and 4.
Lily Rybarczyk: What initially drew you to a career in sustainability?
Susan King: To be honest, I was drawn to architecture first. In part the word “sustainability” did not exist in the context it does today when I started college. I hate to be a cliché, but the leap from architecture to sustainability is natural. It is not, or shouldn’t be separated.
Tania Kadakia: Similar to Susan, “sustainability” wasn’t something that existed as a career or even part of one when I was in college. I was interested in affordable housing as a social justice issue and moved into the finance and development aspect of that work. Affordable housing eventually presented the opportunity to incorporate environmental solutions and is how I started to interact with sustainability. As I’ve worked with financing for a long time, the new and interesting areas for me are design, construction and sustainability.
LR: What does this year’s theme, “Unity + Inclusion,” mean to you? How does this translate to your personal or professional life?
SK: The theme this year is in lockstep with the Social Justice and Equity movement that has been building for some time in the United States and globally. To me it has always been intertwined, but the early years of sustainability in the design industry were really focused, as they needed to be on how we build and what we use to build. This is not to say there isn’t still a ton of work to do in these other arenas, but I am excited to see that we have the energy and space to bring social equity into the discussion now.
TK: I think we all have to get out of the straightforward paths we are on and figure out how, whether in our daily lives, professional careers, etc to make our personal contribution to inclusion. As a community, country, world, we can only achieve unity through learning how to include others.
LR: You are presenting on “Advocacy in Action: Unifying a Multi-Faceted Approach to Solving the Housing Crisis at Scale,” why do you feel it is important to discuss this at Living Future? What do you hope conference attendees will take away from this session?
SK: The session was conceived as a workshop, so we are challenged with harnessing our audience’s energy virtually in a really short time period. We have some ideas about how to do this, so we will see how it goes. In the spirit of unity our goal for the workshop was to break down what I call the problem solving silos around the housing crisis. Through this breakdown we believe that new solutions will emerge. We recognize that this will take more than an hour so we are hoping a community or network focused on these issues is an outcome.
TK: To this audience (based on the attendee data that ILIF provided) I would note the importance of connecting with developers and finance people (banks and equity) around sustainability. Developers control the development process more than any other single participant in the process. I think many developers want to incorporate sustainability but they also have to get a project financed and not lose money on the project. I am looking forward to collaborating with the audience to figure out how can we help bridge that gap.
Hear more from Susan, Tania and their co-presenter, Jordan Sullivan, at their session, “Advocacy in Action: Unifying a Multi-Faceted Approach to Solving the Housing Crisis at Scale,” as they explore creative financing strategies and solutions on April 23 at Living Future 2021!
