New York, NY Mayor Bill de Blasio and speaker Corey Johnson appointed 15 individuals to the New York City Climate Advisory Board.

Local Law 97 is one of the most ambitious plans for reducing emissions in the city, enacting the Climate Advisory Board to provide advice and recommendations in order to optimize implementation and realize reductions in emissions from buildings. Local Law 97 was included in the Climate Mobilization Act (CMA), passed by the City Council in April 2019, and part of the mayor’s New York City Green New Deal.

The Local Law 97 Advisory Board is chaired by DOB’s chief sustainability officer, and comprised of eight appointments by de Blasio, and eight by Johnson. The appointees are: Jill Lerner, Fiona Cousins, Tony Malkin, Kyle Kimball, Peggy Shepard, Angela Pinsky, Donna Chiu, Scott Frank, Donna De Costanzo, David Pollock, Pete Sikora, Howard Styles, Candis Tolliver, Stas Zakrzewski, and Michael Yee.

The board members are architects, engineers, property owners, representatives from the business sector and public utilities, environmental justice advocates, and tenant advocates. In addition to providing guidance, the Advisory Board is also required to prepare and submit periodic reports on the results of implementation once the law is fully in effect.

This landmark package of new and aggressive mandates reflects the urgent nature of the issue they aim to address. Other provisions of the CMA aimed at reducing emissions from buildings include establishing an Office of Sustainability within the Department, requiring most new building projects to have solar panels or a green roof covering 100% of unoccupied roof space, and requiring all buildings over 25,000 s/f to post energy efficiency grade signs by mid-2020. 

Mayor de Blasio and speaker Johnson are committed to making NYC a global leader in the fight against climate change – and the Department of Buildings is taking a lead role in this effort. Buildings currently account for ? of greenhouse gas emissions in NYC, and the mayor has pledged that the city will be carbon neutral by 2050.

“With New York City’s Green New Deal, we are leading in the fight against global warming. These appointees to the Climate Advisory Board will ensure we are realizing our goal of reducing building emissions and making New York City carbon neutral by 2050,” said de Blasio.

• Lerner is managing principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, where she leads award-winning projects in both the public and private sectors in the city, across the U.S. and around the world. With a background of over 40 years of practice, Lerner focuses, in particular, on complex infrastructure and institutional work, for which she is responsible for all aspects of project management and design, and serves the primary client contact during all phases, from initial programming, planning, and conceptual design through construction and project close-out.
• Cousins is an Arup fellow and a member of Arup’s Americas Region Board. She helps lead the sustainability, building engineering and data strategies teams in Arup’s NY office, and directs technical and research investments for the Americas Region. She is a mechanical engineer by profession and has spent much of her career engaged in HVAC design, with an area of specialization in thermal comfort and energy efficiency. She has extensive project experience, including the design of museums, archives, trading floors, laboratories, libraries and performing art centers.
• Malkin is chairman and CEO of Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. He joined its predecessor entities in 1989. Malkin has been a leader in existing building energy efficiency retrofits through coordinating the team of Clinton Climate Initiative, Johnson Controls, JLL, and Rocky Mountain Institute in a groundbreaking project at the Empire State Building. Malkin led the development of standards for energy efficient office tenant installations which is now known as the Tenant Energy Optimization Program at the Urban Land Institute.
• Kimball is vice president of Government, Regional & Community Affairs for Consolidated Edison of New York. He directs the company’s government and community relations activities in NYC, Albany, and Washington, D.C. He manages the company’s relationships with policy makers at all levels of government, guides political and policy issues, and oversees lobbying efforts. Kimball joined Con Edison in June 2015.
• Shepard is co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice and has a long history of organizing and engaging Northern Manhattan residents in community-based planning and campaigns to address environmental protection and environmental health policy locally and nationally. She has successfully combined grassroots organizing, environmental advocacy, and environmental health community-based participatory research to become a national leader in advancing environmental policy and the perspective of environmental justice in urban communities — to ensure that the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment extends to all.
• Pinsky currently serves as executive director of ABNY. Pinsky is dedicated to promotion of NYC and civic dialogue through the expansion and evolution of ABNY’s membership, as well as ABNY’s signature power breakfasts. Prior to joining ABNY, Pinsky served as SVP for management services and government affairs at the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) where she was responsible for REBNY’s commercial and residential management divisions and the lead on building code, sustainability and energy, and federal issues that impact NYC real estate.
• Chiu is a supervising attorney in MFJ’s housing unit. Chiu recently returned to MFJ where she started her legal career as a housing attorney. Prior to returning to MFJ, she was the director of housing and community services at Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE), a non-profit, community-based organization. At AAFE, Chiu led a team comprised of attorney, organizer and housing advocate to provide legal representation, organize and empower non-English speaking immigrants in Queens and Chinatown to stand up to their predatory equity landlords and fight back against tenant harassment. 
• Frank serves as a managing partner at Jaros, Baum & Bolles. Since joining the firm in 1987, Frank has led the firm’s team of experienced professionals in the areas of HVAC design. Frank also leads the Sustainable Design practice area at JB&B, including conducting rigorous feasibility studies to maximize energy conservation in buildings. He has also been actively involved with supporting the mayor’s One City Built to Last plan for reducing city-wide carbon emissions by 80% before the year 2050. Specifically, Frank served on the mayor’s Task Force in 2017 focused on developing a framework for managing carbon emissions for the city’s more than 1 million buildings, including developing specific recommendations for incremental policy changes as well as technical recommendations for retrofitting existing buildings to improve energy performance.
• De Costanzo advocates for the implementation of policies that increase energy efficiency and renewable energy deployment as well as promote sustainable communities and smart growth, with a primary focus on New York State and New York City. Prior to NRDC, De Costanzo was counsel to the New York City Council’s Committee on Environmental Protection, where she advised the speaker and council members on environmental policy and crafted legislation on various issues, including sustainability planning, climate change, clean energy, air and water quality, endangered species, and green procurement.
• Pollock is the associate executive director and director, public policy and Jewish security of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRC), the central coordinating and resource body for over 60 major Jewish organizations in the metropolitan New York area. He has authored multiple books and is a research investigator at John Jay College for Criminal Justice.
• Sikora is the climate and inequality campaigns director for New York Communities for Change, where he creates and implements policy and corporate campaigns against climate change and inequality, including leading a campaign to win fossil fuel divestment commitment by New York City.
• As the training director for Local 94, Styles implements, promotes and oversees various courses for the training program. Styles is constantly reshaping the program to meet the needs of the membership and their employers. Styles is a member of the I.U.O.E. training advisory committee. Styles is currently on BOMA’s preparedness and sustainability committees. He is a member of ASHRAE, the USGBC and the ICC and serves on Murphy Institute’s (CUNY) Labor Advisory Committee. Styles has also volunteered with organizations such as DOB and CWE and the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability.
• Tolliver is the political director for Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, focused on developing and overseeing the union’s multi-state political programs. She has previously worked as the assistant advocacy director for organizing for the New York Civil Liberties Union and as the public affairs coordinator for Planned Parenthood of Nassau County.
• As a design partner, Zakrzewski is involved in projects from schematic design through construction administration and is responsible for determining with his clients the programmatic, budgetary and aesthetic goals of each project. He is responsible for hiring and coordinating the required consultants, performing as a project liaison that integrates their knowledge into the design process. He is responsible for the design team allocated to his projects and manages them through both technical and design tasks with the end goal being a cohesive construction set. Zakrzewski is involved through the bidding and negotiation of each of his projects, procuring contractor’s bids, review and analysis of all bids and final selection of the contractor.
• Yee is the associate director for the Joint Industry Board of the Electrical Industry’s Education and Cultural Trust Fund. He is also president of JIB Catering and a member of the JIB Green Committee. Yee acts as the treasurer for Local Union No. 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.