CAGBC Board

John was recently appointed Chief Operating Officer of Green Infrastructure Partners, one of Canada’s largest and most diversified infrastructure companies. Previously, John was a senior vice president at Ash Grove/CRH Canada Group where he was responsible for commercial and logistics optimization across 12 cement plants and 47 terminals in North America. There, he was responsible for developing and executing the organization’s Sustainable Development vision, strategy, and implementation. John is a strong advocate of sustainable construction and helps to steer the industry to adopt more sustainable construction practices. He actively fosters the triple bottom line principles – value creation, sustainable environmental performance, and social responsibility – to ensure there is a balance between stable economic growth, continual social progress, and preservation of the environment.

Mike Brennan is currently serving as Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. He brings over 30 years of executive leadership and a proven track record of operational success in the not-for-profit sector as well as turnarounds in for-profit companies in North America. He holds a Master of Business from Carleton University in Ottawa and possesses a strong business acumen encompassing strategic planning, collaborative change management, and business process improvement.

Throughout his career, he has focused on reducing operating costs and diversifying revenue streams while increasing performance and productivity. In addition to a solid business foundation, including in banking and manufacturing, Mike has an understanding of and commitment to the not-for-profit sector. His expertise includes governance, fundraising, volunteers, advocacy, grant writing, stakeholder engagement and program implementation.

Julia is responsible for leading CAPREIT’s ESG strategy implementation, reporting activities, and investor-related initiatives, both in Canada and internationally. Her team works to advance the development of environmental benchmarks and targets across their multi-family portfolio and drives internal incorporation of climate risk, climate adaptation, and resiliency considerations across all processes and departments. She engages with internal stakeholders and senior leaders on various ESG initiatives, directs and supports socially responsible thinking and action across the company, and serves as the internal thought leader for emerging trends in sustainability and ESG.

Julia represents CAPREIT within the green building community and is active in such organizations as CAGBC, REALPAC, BOMA Toronto, and ULI. She has held previous sustainability roles at Enwave Energy Corporation and the Real Property Association of Canada.

Jason Manikel is a long-time green-building practitioner, and is currently Principal Consultant, Sustainability & Energy Analytics, at Brightly. Jason has held leadership positions at each of his last three firms and has experience with a full range of business-management topics, including strategy, planning, management, accounting and human resources. A people person, Jason thrives on building open, trusting relationships.

Jason is a graduate of the mechanical engineering program at Queen’s University and is licensed to practice engineering in British Columbia, Ontario and Québec. After ten years designing new, high-performance green buildings, the second half of his career has been focused on the operational improvement of existing ones. For more than ten years, Jason has been a member (and past chair) of the CAGBC’s Energy & Engineering Technical Advisory Group, helping CAGBC rule on technical issues related to LEED and the ZCB program. He is also a Certified Building Commissioning Professional. Day to day, Jason supports Brightly’s Sustainability & Energy Analytics team in the delivery of a variety of energy-, water- and carbon-reduction projects, and continues to be involved in business and management activities.

Lillian is currently the Vice President, Office Operations at Cadillac Fairview. She has overall responsibility for over 5.5 million sq. ft of space in Vancouver and Calgary. She has been in property management for over 26 years – with over 23 of those years at Cadillac Fairview – working in various roles, beginning in accounting, moving on to leasing and General Manager roles at CF Pacific Centre Retail/Office complex and Waterfront Properties, before moving into a regional role.

Born and raised in Vancouver (and speaks conversational Cantonese), Lillian holds a B.A. (Psychology) from the University of British Columbia and a Managing Brokerage license.

In addition to serving as Past Chair on the BOMA BC board, Lillian currently serves on the Museum of Vancouver (MOV) board as Chair and loves to volunteer in mentorship capacities with Ascend Canada, Minerva, and YWCA.

While not working, Lillian enjoys volunteering with the Pets and Friends therapy dog program with her beloved dog Daisy and spending time in the beautiful BC wilderness with her family.

A registered architect and mechanical engineer, Martin brings over two decades of experience and leadership to DIALOG’s urban design, mixed-use development, higher education, and transportation projects. He is passionate about developing sustainable design solutions that are socially, economically, and environmentally responsible, with a portfolio of work that has been recognized with awards for planning, architecture, and innovation.

Martin is currently leading the design of 2150 Keith Drive, a 10-storey mass timber office building employing an innovative braced frame structural system and the UVic Engineering Precinct Expansion, a new $63M civil engineering laboratory complex.

Prior to joining DIALOG, Martin led the design and construction of UBC’s Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS), a LEED® Platinum certified and Living Building. He has taught at the UBC School of Architecture and Faculty of Engineering, served as chair of the UBC Advisory Urban Design Panel, and is currently serving on the UBC Land Use Committee and the Board of Habitat for Humanity (Greater Vancouver). He has also served as chair on the City of Vancouver Urban Design Panel.

An advocate for ESG, Nisha Agrawal is QuadReal’s Director, Sustainability, joining the company in 2017.  Her expertise includes promoting green building certifications across the Canadian portfolio and supporting development of environmental, social and governance practices at QuadReal properties internationally. 

Nisha brings more than 10 years of experience in the commercial real estate industry, beginning her career in Finance at Bentall Kennedy.  From there, she moved into Sustainability and for over five years has been developing programs to effectively streamline and integrate sustainability initiatives with operations. 

Nisha holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of British Columbia and is a member of the Chartered Professional Accountants of BC.  Nisha is inspired by the progress companies have made to improve tenant health and well-being, reduce resource depletion, and innovate to create solutions in building operations.

As the inaugural Research Chair, Sustainability at Mohawk College, Tony provides leading-edge research that will contribute to a low-carbon economy. He engages with students using a multi-disciplinary approach to find real-world solutions to social, economic, and environmental challenges.

A professional engineer with 38 years of experience in engineering, facilities management, and capital development, Tony has considerable institutional experience, particularly with McMaster University and Mohawk College. In his leadership capacity at Mohawk College, he was responsible for the planning, design, construction, and operation of Canada’s largest institutional, zero-carbon building – The Joyce Centre for Partnership and Innovation. This award-winning facility became the first to achieve dual certification under the CAGBC’s Zero Carbon Building program.

Tony has a doctorate degree in Civil Engineering with a focus on green buildings and policy and is a former adjunct faculty member at McMaster.