New Leader Charts a Path to a Living Future

The International Living Future Institute (ILFI) has announced that Lindsay Baker will be taking the reins of the organization starting on August 9, 2021. She succeeds interim CEO K C Gauldine, who took over in April 2020 after the departure of Amanda Sturgeon. Baker was selected because she brings “the power, vision, and experience to ignite the movement and shape its trajectory,” said ILFI Board Chair Anthony Guerrero in announcing the hire.

Baker brings a robust resumé of experience in green building and sustainability from a range of different positions. She has worked with environmental NGOs, led a tech start-up, and worked within the corporate sphere with Google and WeWork. She also co-hosts, with Kira Gould, a podcast featuring notable women in sustainability entitled Design the Future. (Check out the August 5 episode to hear Baker talk about taking on the new CEO role.)

Baker sees this CEO role as an ideal opportunity to build on her past experience by supporting a growing community that can both entice and prod the building industry to take on urgent environmental and social challenges. She aims to channel ILFI’s resources to create “a surge of interest and passion behind changing our industry.” She is also looking to leverage ILFI’s community, which, she says, “has always been on the cutting edge" and is “unequivocating about the future we need to create,” to build strong partnerships with other organizations in the climate realm. “Our organization is really well positioned to be a part of a bigger movement,” she says.

While she brings a vision for IFLI’s potential, Baker doesn’t claim to be coming in with any specific plans for the organization’s current programs. “I’m just learning the organization,” she says. “I don’t know all the products that well, and I haven’t been a customer of them, so I don’t come with a lot of preconceived notions about what it’s doing well and what it’s not doing well.” She describes herself as doing a lot of listening, both to staff and to the broader community, and that she’s “ready for those difficult discussions” about how to focus the organization’s efforts.

One aspect of IFLI’s work that Baker does intend to expand is its role in advocating for social change. Prior to joining ILFI she had been working on creating a new organization focused on advocacy, and she believes that policies and regulations have to change in order for the building industry as a whole to help realize IFLI’s vision of creating communities that are “socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative.”

For more information:

International Living Future Institute
www.living-future.org