Team

Terry Swack, Co-founder & CEO

Terry is an Internet and environmental entrepreneur and a pioneer in customer experience strategy and design. In 2005, she founded and served as CEO of The Beam and GreenBuildingBlocks.com, a Web 2.0 marketplace for consumers, manufacturers, and green building professionals to power the demand for clean and green products and services. In 2002, Terry served as a founding management team member of network security software company StillSecure. Co-leading the product teams, they brought three best-of-breed products to market in 18 months. Her first company TSDesign, an Internet strategy and product design firm, was acquired in 1999 by Razorfish, a global digital services provider.

Inês Sousa, Ph.D., Co-founder & Product Manager

Inês brings a proven track record of success connecting product design and engineering with sustainability. For her doctoral dissertation, she developed an innovative, machine-learning-based approach to help companies incorporate environmental assessment and life cycle thinking early in their product development cycles. Recently, Inês served on the committee to create the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment's process and exam to certify LCA professionals, and also became an LCA Certified Professional through this program. She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Systems Design, and a Master of Engineering in Environmental and Water Quality Engineering, both from MIT.

Philip White, IDSA, VP Sustainable Product Design

Philip is an ecological design strategist who develops ecologically intelligent products and systems. He specializes in helping practitioners and students apply ecodesign strategies and advanced environmental impact assessment methods. Philip organized the development, and is the lead author of Okala. He advises on impact assessment to the Sustainable Products Purchasers Coalition and the LifeCycle Initiative of the United Nations Environmental Programme. Philip assisted in the creation of the LCA certification exam from the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment and also became a Certified LCA Professional through this program. He is an Assistant Professor of ID, and School of Sustainability at ASU. Philip received a BS in mechanical engineering from the U. of Kansas, and a Masters of 3D design from Cranbrook Academy.

Keith Lehman, CTO & Chief Architect

For over 20 years, Keith has held senior technical management positions at public and private companies. Past roles include Chairman and CTO for Ledge Multimedia, a firm Keith founded and then sold to Dataware Technologies, CKO for Leading Side, and Director of Engineering for WebGen Systems. He has led teams that built award winning consumer and enterprise applications, including the National Geographic Complete, the Donnelly Financial Network, and WebGen Systems' Intelligent Energy Management SaaS offering. Keith has degrees from Tufts University in Engineering Science, Mathematics, and Physics.

Greg Canavera, Director, Software Design

Greg brings 10 years of experience designing Web-based software and large-scale Web sites. He has extensive experience with start-ups and early-stage product design, designing great products right from the start. His multidisciplinary skill-set includes product strategy, interaction design, information architecture, visual design and branding. Previous experience includes design positions with The Beam and GreenBuildingBlocks.com, StillSecure, Razorfish and TSDesign.

Jeff Binder, Managing Editor

Jeff has been a writer and editor for nearly 30 years. Most recently, he was Senior Editor for GreenBuildingBlocks.com, an e-publication devoted to providing resources, tools, and community for building professionals committed to sustainability. An award-winning writer, video producer and author, Jeff has worked for clients as diverse as the New York Times, Harvard Business School, Gartner, Ziff Davis, and Hanley Wood, and has worked on numerous web launches.

Okala co-developers: Steve Belletire and Louise St. Pierre