Gail Vittori, longtime USGBC member and Co-Director of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, has been a steadfast supporter of USGBC and has, over the course of her exceptional career, done a great deal of work ensuring a better quality of life for thousands of people. It is for these reasons that she was a 2020 USGBC Leadership Award recipient. 

Through the years, Gail has been involved in numerous LEED, USGBC, and GBCI projects. An inaugural LEED Fellow, a past USGBC board member and USGBC and GBCI board chairs, Gail co-authored the book Sustainable Healthcare Architecture and spearheaded a number of design projects in Texas that highlight what happens when you successfully couple healthy people, healthy places, and a healthy economy.   

In 1989, Gail proposed what would become the framework for the City of Austin’s Green Building Program — the first green building program in the world. It had an incredible impact on not just the creation of USGBC but the launch of LEED and other building policies globally.   

And more recently, Gail envisioned the Austin Central Library, the first LEED Platinum certified project in Austin’s portfolio, as the ‘front porch for the City’ and a civic hub where people could better connect with others in their community.   

For the Mueller Development, one of the world’s largest LEED for Neighborhood Development projects, Gail, the Catellus Development Group, and the City of Austin redeveloped the Robert Mueller Municipal Airport into a mixed-use urban village that sustainably supports a community on its way to becoming home to more than 14,000 people, 14,500 employees, 10,500 construction jobs, and more than 6,200 homes.   

When reviewing the long list of Gail’s achievements, you can find one singular common denominator: Health.    

A Founding Chair of the LEED for Healthcare Committee and creator of the Green Guide for Health Care, Gail’s work has always been rooted in helping others see the connection between the buildings we live in and the bodies we inhabit. The LEED Gold certified Dell Seton Medical Center, the SITES Gold certified Dell Medical District, and the PEER Platinum certified University of Texas Austin campus are all first-rate examples of Gail’s behind the scenes brilliance and directives in the field of healthy building.

The Dell Medical School and its teaching hospital, Dell Seton Medical Center, are part of the Dell Medical District, a development located in central Austin on the University of Texas campus. And in large part because of Gail and the project team, in 2014, The University of Texas at Austin also became the first PEER certified campus in the world.    

Dell Seton Medical Center’s Health Learning Building achieved LEED Gold for New Construction. Its Health Discovery Building also achieved LEED Gold for New Construction certification — and provides state-of-the-art multidisciplinary clinical research space. Its Health Transformation Building achieved LEED Gold for Core and Shell — and Gail and her team focused on the reducing of water and energy consumption, as well as the use of high-quality materials and improving indoor air quality. And, finally, Dell Seton Medical Center achieved LEED Gold for Healthcare and a 4-star AEGB rating.   

Gail’s work across the board is always guided by an innate understanding that healthy people and healthy spaces cannot exist without one another. So much of her work has been about making sure that people from all walks of life — whether sick or in good health, whether in need of affordable housing or a sense of community — experience the higher standard of living we all deserve.