Gail Vittori,

LEED Fellow

Co-Director

Photo by Carson Fisk-Vittori

For more than three decades Gail has been a catalyst for local, state and national initiatives advancing green building protocols, policies and prototypes. In 1989, Ms. Vittori developed the conceptual framework for what evolved as the City of Austin’s Green Builder Program, the first green building program in the world. In 2001, she convened the Green Guide for Health Care, catalyzing a revolution in healthcare design, construction and operations. She was the 2009 Chair of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Board of Directors, served on the USGBC Board from 2002-2010 and is the 2012 Vice-Chair of the Green Building Certification Institute Board of Directors. Gail was Founding Chair of the LEED for Healthcare committee (2004-2008), and co-author of Sustainable Healthcare Architecture, published by Wiley & Sons. She was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and was featured as an Innovator: Building a Greener World in TIME Magazine.

Pliny Fisk III

Co-Director

Photo by Lauren Jones

Pliny Fisk III is Co-Founder / Co-Director of Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, the oldest sustainable design and planning, research and educational firm in the US. With a background in architecture, landscape architecture, and the systems sciences, Pliny has made pivotal contributions to the sustainability movement for more than four decades by developing replicable prototypes, as well as protocols and policy initiatives.

His prototypes challenge conventional wisdom about building design, engineering, materials, economic development as well as landscape and regional planning. These prototypes have been adopted by several Native American nations, including the Sioux, Apache, Hope, and Navajo, as well as the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast, and prompted both nascent governments, such as the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, the Raza Unida Party in Texas, and the New Jewel Movement in Grenada, and established governments, such as the former Soviet Union, Cuba, and China, to seek his expertise. Notable, widely-published prototypes include the Laredo Blueprint Demonstration Farm - a flexible, wind-powered farming system and The Advanced Green Building Demonstration, recognized as one of the top 10 green buildings in the world in an Architect Magazine online survey.

Pliny’s protocols helped shape the world’s first green building program and have now spread globally. His methods have been used to help green the White House, the US Pentagon, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) building in Montana, and The University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. Pliny’s policy initiatives were instrumental in the creation of the first Greening of State Guidelines for the State of Texas, helped institute the National Center for Appropriate Technology, and were used by the think tanks that established the US Green Building Council's LEED rating system.

Pliny’s work has earned several national and international awards and recognitions including the Lewis Mumford Award, The Earth Summit Award in Rio, the U.S. Green Building Council’s Sacred Tree award, and The Passive Solar Pioneer Award. Pliny was named one of 14 Visionaries in 2006 by Metropolis Magazine and has appeared in many other publications, including the New York Times, Popular Science, and the book Contemporary American Architects. Pliny’s firm was featured in the American Planning Association Journal as one of five firms representing the future of the ecological planning work started by Ian McHarg.

Pliny has received contracts from the EPA, DOE, HUD, CSA, AIA and numerous foundations. In addition to his role at CMPBS, Pliny has served as an advisor to the MacArthur, Gates, and Enterprise Foundations and was chosen to serve on the GSA’s National Registry of Peer Professionals in the Design Excellence, Construction Excellence and Art in Architecture program. Pliny has held the Bruce Goff Chair for Creative Architecture at the University of Oklahoma, served as the Herrin Distinguished Fellow at Mississippi State University, served as Signature Faculty at Texas A & M University in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning and held other faculty positions at Ball State University and University of Texas at Austin. He is CEO and founder of Sustainable Earth Technologies, a Texas corporation and pro-active private sector green technology company.

Mary Petrovich,

LEED AP

Senior Research Associate

Photo by Alan Pogue

Since 2006, Mary has provided administrative support and LEED and sustainability consulting services at CMPBS. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Prescott College, with focus on sustainable building materials, ecological and biophilic design. When not working, Mary can generally be found spending quality time with her husband, Aaron Cloninger, and daughter Isla.

Brendan Wittstruck,

LEED AP

Senior Design Associate

Photo by Robert Crites

Brendan began working at the Center in 2012. An Austinite by birth, he worked with Meridian Energy Systems as an installation technician before attending Graduate School at Washington University in St. Louis, from which he earned Masters degrees in Architecture, Urban Design and Construction Management and received the Alpha Rho Chi Medal. His graduate thesis proposed design opportunities around the demolition of the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans. He also holds a degree in Studio Art from Davidson College. Brendan's primary role at the Center is design support for development and masterplanning projects, although his work has ranged from graphic design to serving as Project Manager for a disaster relief housing construction collaboration with AmeriCorps.

Aaron Cloninger

Site Steward

Photo by Alan Pogue

Aaron joined the CMPBS staff as Site Superintendent in 2007. He is a generalist, an artist, and a human ecologist. Volunteering his expertise to CMPBS just after his move to Austin in 2005, Aaron first worked with the Center by assisting with diagnosis and repair to the photovoltaic systems. During his time at CMPBS, Aaron has been actively pursuing his goal to become a master generalist in conservation-driven adaptive strategies.

Aaron’s trade skills and construction sensibilities are built on a lifetime of experiences in the mechanical and expressive arts. This background includes over fifteen years of experience in all of the residential construction trades, and various light industrial trades.

With a Liberal Arts education from Prescott College in Arizona, Aaron’s disciplinary foci are the Visual Arts, Anthropology, Psychology, Mathematics, and Ecology. He sees education as a lifelong journey; and continues to investigate, participate in, and teach a variety of arts and disciplines.

Randall Notgrass

Assistant Site Steward

Photo by Alan Pogue

Alice Embree

Financial Manager

Photo by Alan Pogue

Alice Embree joined the staff of CMPBS in June 2007 as a part-time bookkeeper. Alice earned her B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin as well as a Master of Science Degree in Community and Regional Planning from the School of Architecture. Between 1988 and her retirement in 2004, Alice worked for the Office of the Attorney General’s Child Support Division as a strategic planner, tracking state and federal performance measures, producing legislative reports, and developing fiscal notes. She has been an offset printer, typesetter, silk screener, vegetarian cook, and office worker. She was a contributor to Sisterhood is Powerful in 1970, has written for the Texas Observer and is a frequent writer for The Rag Blog. She serves on two non-profit boards and has been an advocate for peace and justice concerns for decades.

Elena Carey

Office Administrator/

Executive Assistant

Photo by Cassidy Ellis

Elena began working for CMPBS in July 2012. She graduated from The College of William and Mary in May 2011 with a B.A. in both Environmental Policy and Anthropology. Elena has attempted to gain an experiential urban planning education. In that vein, she has served as a planning intern for Pandl and Associates, the James City County Planning and Zoning Office, and the City of Austin Department of Planning and Development. She was awarded a Dintersmith Honors Fellowship and Altshuler Scholarship to study zoning in Bethlehem, PA and wrote her honors thesis on the subject.