Green Century Institute

GCI Advisory Board

Liz Burdock - Development Industry Consultant
Chip Conley - Hotel and Real Estate Entrepreneur
William Levis - Urban Land Institute Policymaker
Jon Jerde - Urban Designer
Paolo Soleri - Architect

Liz Burdock

Liz Burdock, Vice President, The Dutko Group, brings the expertise of being a former senior advisor in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as the broad knowledge of the housing to our clients. Liz has worked on affordable housing, community and economic development issues for the past 13 years. Liz served for five years under the Clinton Administration as a Senior Advisor to FHA Commissioner and Assistant Secretary for Housing. Prior to that role, she served as a Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research and assisted in the writing and development of the President's Urban Policy Report-- State of the Cities . While at HUD she worked on a variety of policy issues including welfare reform, economic development, workforce investment, brownfields redevelopment and public housing. In addition, Liz served as the Executive Director of the Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH) a White House sponsored partnership between the American home builders, businesses, environmental groups and the 13 federal agencies.

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Chip Conley

Chip Conley is a real estate entrepreneur and the founder, chairman, and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, the innovative Bay Area hotel chain. Conley founded Joie de Vivre in 1987 after working as an analyst for Morgan Stanley's real-estate division, and then moving on to become a project manager for Bay West Development Co., overseeing historic-building renovations in San Francisco. Conley's book, "The Rebel Rules: Daring to Be Yourself in Business", was published in January 2001.

William Levis

Bill Levis is a Senior Associate for the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute. "Bill" Levis is one of the nation's leading authorities on non-profit tax law and management, and is vitally interested in the initiatives being developed by the Green Century Institute. Bill is serving as the Treasurer of GCI and advising on general management and project development.

In this capacity, Mr. Levis has organized and implemented research, developed and disseminated projects to define the scope of nonprofit reporting problems, made recommendations for improving the quality of reporting, and implemented those recommendations. He regularly consults with the IRS on foundation tax law and works with various state and national agencies on special projects. Bill has authored many articles in professional journals and is a member of several professional organizations, including the National Center for Charitable Statistics and the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Jon Jerde

Jon Jerde is Founder and Chairman of Jerde Partnership International. Since founding his Los Angeles-based urban planning and architecture firm in 1977, Jon Adams Jerde, FAIA, has explored the architecture of change.

Whether creating large-scale, multi-function urban districts or focusing on small-scale prototypes, experiences, not objects, are the focus. Mr. Jerde's visionary ideas began to synthesize when he created the design of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984. His other revolutionary projects include Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego; CityWalk at Universal City; Las Vegas; Fremont Street Experience; Canal City Hakata in Fukuoka, Japan; and Beursplein in Rotterdam. Mr. Jerde's projects have been recognized by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the International Council of Shopping Centers, and two ministries of the Japanese government.

The University of Southern California awarded the Jon Adams Jerde, FAIA, Endowment toward a Chair in Architecture and the Distinguished Alumnus Award. He was named an AIA Fellow in 1990 and received AIA/LA's Pacific Rim Award for global innovation and impact. Mr. Jerde studied fine arts and engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1957-58 and received his B.A. degree in architecture from USC in 1964.

Paolo Soleri

Paolo Soleri is winner of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement 2006. The award is given in recognition of an individual who has made a profound, long-term contribution to contemporary design practice. Click here for more info.

Born in Turin, Italy in 1919, Paolo was awarded his Ph.D. with highest honors in architecture from the Torino Polytechnico in 1946. He came to the United States in 1947 and spent a year-and-a-half in fellowship with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in Arizona, and at Taliesin East in Wisconsin. During this time, he gained international recognition for a bridge design displayed at the Museum of Modern Art and published in The Architecture of Bridges by Elizabeth Mock.

He returned to Italy in 1950 where he was commissioned to build a large ceramics, "Ceramica Artistica Solimene." The processes he became familiar with in the ceramics industry led to his award-winning designs of ceramic and bronze windbells and siltcast architectural structures. In 1956 he settled in Scottsdale, Arizona, with his late wife, Colly, and their two daughters.

Dr. and Mrs. Soleri made a life-long commitment to research and
experimentation in urban planning, establishing the Cosanti Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation. The Foundation's major project is Arcosanti, a prototype town for 7,000 people designed by Soleri, under construction since 1970. Located at Cordes Junction, in central Arizona, the project is based on Soleri's concept of "Arcology," architecture coherent with ecology. Arcology advocates cities designed to maximize the interaction and accessibility associated with an urban environment; minimize the use of energy, raw materials and land, reducing waste and environmental pollution; and allow interaction with the surrounding natural environment.

A landmark exhibition, "The Architectural Visions of Paolo Soleri", organized in 1970 by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, traveled extensively in the U.S. and Canada, breaking records for attendance. His work has been exhibited worldwide. He has been awarded three honorary doctorates, the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for Craftmanship in 1963, the Gold Medal from the World Biennieal of Architecture in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1981, and the Silver Medal of the Academied Architecture in Paris, 1984. Soleri is a distinguished lecturer in the College of Architecture at Arizona State University.