Kathleen bakewell
RLA, LEED AP: ND and BD+C
President, Founder, Executive Director
Kathleen Bakewell is a landscape architect and LEED Accredited Professional with specialties in Neighborhood Development and Building Design and Construction. She is the Founding Principal of Brook Farm Group, an ecologically-focused landscape architecture practice based in New York City.
Kathleen received a Master Degree in Landscape Architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Her pioneering work with Sustainable South Bronx is featured in Women in Green: Voices of Sustainable Design, by Kira Gould and Lance Hosey. She has lectured at the AIA and USGBC national conferences and has taught at Yale, Columbia, The School of Visual Arts, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Harvard.
thomas jost
LEED AP, AICP
Vice President
Tom Jost has more than twenty three years of experience delivering complex, multi-disciplinary sustainability projects of international significance. Tom managed the plan for the conversion of Fresh Kills Park, America’s largest landfill, into New York City’s largest ecological habitat, the “Central Park of the 21st Century.” He also managed the design and construction of NYC’s High Line, internationally recognized as the new standard for urban open space. Tom has lectured nationally on the topics of sustainable urbanism and sustainable design, including at Columbia, Yale, New Jersey Institute of Technology, City University of New York, Greenbuild, The Institute for Urban Design, the New York City Mayor’s Office of Environmental Remediation, The American Planning Association, the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment and Planning and Urban Design Committee.
doug farr
AIA, APA, CNU, LEED AP
Secretary
Doug Farr is the founding principal of Farr Associates, an award-winning architecture and planning firm identified by the New York Times as “the most prominent of the city’s growing cadre of ecologically sensitive architects.” Farr’s mission is to design sustainable human environments, applying the principles of LEED at the scale of the neighborhood and designing green buildings exclusively for urban contexts. Farr Associates was the first firm in the world to design three LEED-Platinum buildings (Christy Webber Landscapes, the Chicago Center for Green Technology and the Center for Neighborhood Technology), which stand as models of urban architectural sustainability.
An architecture graduate of the University of Michigan and Columbia University, Doug is on the board of the Congress for the New Urbanism, serves on the board of directors of the BioRegional Development Group, is on the Energy and Climate TAC of the Star Community Index, and was the founding chair of the LEED Neighborhood Development project (LEED-ND). He is the author of Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature (November 2007, Wiley)
andreas vassilos
Treasurer
Andreas Vassilos is a pioneer in the sustainable manufacturing of environmentally safe industrial chemicals. A self-described “Green Warrior” and serial entrepreneur, Andreas is driven to provide practical sustainable applications to the service, manufacturing, technology, distribution and construction industries. He opened his first company in Chicago, in 1971, innovating what are now known as green methodologies, and in 1975 started a chemical manufacturing company featuring “All Non-Toxic and Non-Polluting Products.” He received a degree in environmental sciences from Grinnell College and has remained active in mentoring and teaching throughout the Chicago region, sharing his entrepreneurial and environmental expertise through industry training programs and as a guest instructor at Purdue’s e-center. In addition to his work with BioCities, Andreas is a board member and co-owner/founder of a Women Owned Business Enterprise known for sustainable construction and de-construction. His firm, Brite Site, is recognized as the first full-line manufacturer of “Green Products.”