Board of Managers
The PHA-US Board of Managers are members chosen for their commitment to the promotion of the Passive House Building Standard, their professional experience and their geographic diversity. Currently the board consists of members nominated by PHIUS in 2010 and members nominated by the PHA-US board in 2011. There are 11-13 board members, 8 members representing the climatic regions of the US and three to five at large positions. Future board members will consist of members nominated by Local Chapters and the PHA-US board, approved by the PHA-US board. Board members serve terms of three years and are not compensated for their work. The board meets monthly and yearly, at least once, in person.
Carl Covey
Treasurer
Carl Covey is a physician practicing in Little Rock, Arkansas and the founder of Pain Treatment Centers of America. He has been practicing as a Pain Specialist for over 20 years and is a graduate of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. He also holds an undergraduate degree in engineering from the University of Arkansas. During his years of medical practice after leaving the engineering profession Carl built an energy efficient home and remodeled several more. In his search for a more inspired paradigm for his retirement home he discovered the Passive House building energy standard. In 2010 he took the Certified Passive House Consultant training and has been hooked ever since, excited to reactivate his engineering skills and knowledge. Carl chairs the Alliance's Fundraising and Finance Committee.
Michael Cresanti
Passive House Consultant
http://www.houseandhomegroup.net/
A licensed architect & real estate broker practicing in San Francisco, Michael was taught passive solar design and technologies in a second year 'mechanical drawing' class in an upstate New York public high school. While still in high school he spent a year designing a passive solar home in an architecture class. These formative experiences instilled what has become a life long passion to learn how to build the better mousetrap, a well designed, reasonably priced home that is at once extremely energy efficient, and has excellent indoor air quality and daylighting.
After relocating to the West Coast he spent ten years in the music and sound industries. During this time he always kept his hands in the trades and energy efficiency before returning to architecture school and earning a professional degree in architecture and an MBA focused in real estate.
Being in architecture has allowed him to bring his passion for energy efficient construction to bear. Since then he's worked for firms building urban hi-rise condos, spent years in low income housing and worked for a developer-architect doing urban infill multi-family housing before completing his architectural licensing and acquiring a real estate broker's license.
Today as founder and owner of the House & Home Group a boutique firm he offers consulting as well as turn-key, one-stop-shop services to people, families and small businesses seeking homes.
Jeff Dinkle
President, Atlanta Chapter
Jeff Dinkle, LEED AP, CPHC, CPHD, brings more than two decades of experience in sustainable construction and renovation to his board service at the Alliance. Founder and owner of Eco Custom Homes and its parent company ICON Development Corporation, Jeff has become a recognized leader in Atlanta's green building scene. He holds degrees in economics and sociology from Emory University, has trained in Earthcraft principles at Southface, and serves on the board of the Green Building Council (part of The Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association). Through Eco Custom Homes, he builds and renovates very efficient high-performance structures that embrace comfortable and healthy living. Jeff chairs the Alliance’s Website Committee.
Prudence Ferreira
PHIUS Liaison
Prudence Ferreira is the founder and Principal of Integral Impact Inc. She is a LEED AP, LEED for Homes Rater, GreenPoint Rater for New and Existing Homes, Certified Passive House Consultant (CPHC), Certified Permaculture Designer, T24 Certified Energy Analyst (CEA), and HERS I, II + PV Rater. Prudence’s passion is employing building science and systems thinking to inform the creation of ultra low-impact, high-performance business and built environments.
Prior to founding Integral Impact, Prudence pioneered and directed the Corporate Social Responsibility Program at Amy's Organics and worked as an independent green building and business consultant. She is active in the green building and business communities and serves as Acting President of the Passive House Institute US (PHIUS). In the past, she has also served as President USGBC Redwood Empire Chapter, as a founding member of Passive House Alliance-San Francisco, and as Treasurer of the Food Trade Sustainability Leadership Association (FTSLA).
Prudence’s clients include commercial and residential property owners and developers, business owners, building professionals, non-profits, governments, building materials manufacturers, and ecopreneurs. Areas of special focus include cost-optimized low-carbon building strategies using the Passive House building energy standard, LEED for wineries and CSR Program Development based on LEED EBOM, the Natural Step, and ISO 14001. Ms Ferreira holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree received on a full academic scholarship from Marymount Manhattan.
Sam Hagerman
President
Sam Hagerman has nearly 30 years of experience working as a carpenter, builder, and business owner. Hailing from a family of Montana ranchers, contractors and public servants, Sam learned carpentry at a young age. He moved to Oregon in 1984 to attend Reed College, and made the transition from carpenter to business owner in 1995 when he founded Hammer And Hand, Inc., the residential contracting firm that emphasizes sustainability in the built and work environments. His leadership has kept the company at the apex of technical innovation, craftsmanship, and quality. Sam and his company hold the full complement of sustainable building affiliations and certifications and have built homes using a wide range of techniques, including rammed earth, straw bale, stucco, SIPS, cedar chip and clay slip, ICFs, and advanced framing. He is also an active leader in policy and code issues at the local, state and national levels. Sam is currently building a home designed to meet Passive House, Minergie-Eco/P, LEED Platinum, and net-zero standards.
Michael Hindle
President, Capital Chapter
www.chesapeakepassivehouse.com
Michael Hindle was formally trained as an artist and has been an art professor for ten years. Michael began his inquiry into sustainable architecture while teaching on an architecture design studio faculty at Miami University of Ohio in 2003. Beginning in 2008 he worked as a designer, draftsman with Brennan + Company Architects and researched ways to deepen the firm’s commitment to environmental practice. In 2010 became a Certified Passive House Consultant. Also that year he co-founded and is currently the president of the Passive House Alliance, Capital Chapter. He is also the co-founder and principal of the sustainable design and architecture firm, INDRAlogic, and the Passive House consulting service, Chesapeake Passive House. Michael has been active in various state, local, and federal energy efficiency and climate change legislation lobbying efforts in cooperation with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Environment Maryland. Recently Michael was a key advisor to Baltimore County Councilman Vince Gardina on Baltimore County’s High Performance Homes Bill 43-10 and other energy performance related legislation. Michael was a presenter at the 5th Annual North American Passive House Conference, Portland, Oregon on legislative initiatives and his work on the Baltimore County High performance Homes Bill in November of 2010. Michael served on Baltimore City’s Sustainability Commission Water Working Group, was a Baltimore City Sustainability Commission Community Ambassador, and a member of Baltimore County’s Sustainability Network Building and Energy Focus Group.
Mark A. Miller
Interim Executive Director
Mark brings more than 25 years of experience in energy efficient design to the board and the Alliance. Mark received his architectural degree from the College of Architecture at the University of Arizona, known for their leadership in passive solar design. Here he was influenced by the teachings of Buckminster Fuller and the idea of “doing more with less”. Mark opened his own design/build office in Chicago in 1998. The office has a reputation for being a champion of energy efficient design that speaks to the soul, before it was in the public’s consciousness. Mark has designed and built many high performance residences in the Midwest. He was a part of the winning team in the City of Chicago’s “Green Homes for Chicago” International Competition; the prototype home was built on the South Side of Chicago. Since being trained in Passive House, Mark co-founded the Chicago chapter of the Passive House Alliance in 2010. He has been lecturing around the Midwest on the Passive House Standard to architectural organizations, home-builder and realty associations, green expositions and to seekers who will listen to his" fire and brimstone" sermons.
Mary Rogero
President SW Ohio Chapter
For 15 years, Mary was a principal in the design firm of Rogero Buckman Architects. With her business partner, she also helped develop a construction company to construct the firm’s designs and a development company. The design firm was primarily focused in the area of housing, particularly loft development and the rehabilitation of older buildings. Mary is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at Miami University. She teaches Passive and Low Energy Design seminars and Design Studio to freshman through graduate level. She is passionate about engaging students in the practice of Passive House and high performance design to prepare them as future leaders in sustainability. Mary continues to practice architecture and is the current president of the PH Alliance SouthWest Ohio chapter.
Peter Schneider
Passive House Consultant
Peter Schneider works as an Energy Consultant at the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation in Burlington, Vermont. He provides technical support to builders, architects, affordable housing agencies and homeowners participating in a number of different programs such as ENERGY STAR Homes, LEED and Passive House. Peter's goal is to help his clients build more energy-efficient, healthy, durable and sustainable buildings. He is also involved with clients outside Vermont, the U.S. EPA, U.S. DOE, U.S. Green Building Council and others. Peter is a certified Energy Rater, Home Performance Technical Advisor, Passive House Consultant and LEED for Homes QAD.
John Semmelhack
Passive House Consultant
John Semmelhack is the owner of Think Little, an energy efficiency and green building consulting firm based in Charlottesville, Virginia. John is currently consulting on four Passive House projects in central Virginia that will be among the first certified Passive House projects in the Mid-Atlantic. A Certified Passive House Consultant, John sits on the newly formed PHIUS Technical Committee and will soon join the small group of PHIUS trainers for the Certified Passive House Consultant training programs. He is a certified Home Energy Rating System (HERS) rater, a Technical Advisor to builders in the Earthcraft House Virginia green building program, and a BPI-certified Building Analyst. He is a graduate of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder. John developed the PHIUS+ RESNET raters training curriculum, and leads that program for PHIUS. He lives with his wife and two daughters in a superinsulated, low-energy house in Charlottesville. His dream is to carry his blower door testing equipment on a cargo bicycle (John was an elite competitive cyclist from 1995-2005) to verify the airtightness of his next “intown” Passive House project.
Gary Steps
President, St. Louis Chapter
Gary is the founder and Chief Visionary of Butterfly Energy Works. Gary’s many and diverse skills, including physicist, engineer and certified project manager, enable him to bring together ideas across many fields and industries. From this knowledge he has developed a full breadth of techniques and technologies that deliver cost-effective, integrated energy solutions for homes and small businesses. He spent 30 years with IBM in a broad range of information systems architectures and disciplines. He often worked in "bleeding edge" technologies and projects, while retaining and understanding the value of the mainstream. Gary brings extensive experience in a broad range of systems and disciplines to every project in which he has been involved.
Green space credentials include LEED-AP, BPI certified auditor, NAHB ANSI certified verifier, and Passive House Consultant, among others. Gary has been a long-standing member of the Washington University Medical School Human Studies Committee as a scientific voice. He is a member of the St. Louis Chapter US Green Building Council, as well as the USGBC Technical Committee. He also belongs to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Sustainable Buildings Industries Council, and the Clean Technology and Sustainable Industries Organization. He was an early signatory to the Apollo Alliance.
Dan Whitmore
Passive House Consultant
Dan Whitmore has worked in various aspects of the construction industry since 1987, predominantly as carpenter, general contractor and builder with additional stints as a designer, consultant and FEMA Disaster Assistance Inspector. His introduction to high-performance building came at an early and impressionable age when, in 1977, his family built an award-winning solar home in Oklahoma. With a focus on translating environmental and affordable design ideas into built reality he specializes in hyper energy-efficient structures. As designer and builder, he completed one of the first Passive Houses in Washington State. He is the owner of Seattle, Wash. based Blackbird Builders, LLC., is a Certified Passive House Consultant and an instructor for the Passive House Institute U.S. (PHIUS.) Dan is a founding member of Passive House Northwest.
Lance Wright
Vice President
Lance Wright graduated from Auburn University with a degree in the Forest Ecology Honor’s Program in 1976 and worked with the U. S. Forest Service in Colorado, Idaho, Oregon and Alaska until 1983. He then went on to work for Democratic and environmental campaigns in Colorado through several election cycles, including three of his own runs for a seat in the State House of Representatives, before being elected to the Parker Town Council in 1996 and re-elected in 2000. In 1998, Lance built his first energy efficient house, and his low heating bills helped him convince fellow Council members to increase building code requirements for energy efficiency in the Town of Parker. In 2002 he was the Democratic candidate for Congress against Tom Tancredo in the heavily Republican Sixth District. Lance ran on an anti-terrorism, energy-independence platform that was called “aggressive” and “unrealistic” by the Rocky Mountain News in its endorsement in the race. He moved to Springfield, Missouri in 2004 for family reasons and became the first US EPA Energy Star building partner in southern Missouri. After building Energy Star rated homes in Missouri for two years, Lance returned to Colorado and established the energy efficiency design and consulting business, Green Energy Man, Inc. Lance was part of the charter group of Passive House Consultants trained by PHIUS in the fall of 2008. He and his wife live in Denver in their “Near Passive House”, which they are currently retrofitting to gain Passive House Certification.
