APRIL SAUL / Staff Photographer
Shari Shapiro on the roof of her Center City office building. Of her blog, she says: "I wanted to also reach a broader audience. I can have a conversation with my readers in real time. ..."
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Question & Answer: Shari Shapiro, green-building lawyer
Q: Those readers, can you characterize them?
A: They are lawyers, government officials, architects, planners - that's really the majority.
Q: Has anything about the blog surprised you?
A: What has surprised me most is actually the influence that it has had. I've received comments and had discussions on my blog with thought leaders in the field. Government officials from major municipalities - Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland, and so forth, with other leading journalists in the area, and have been invited to speak to the American Bar Association, the American Institute of Architects, National Association of Home Builders, and so forth, all as a result of the thought leadership that I've shown on the blog.
The reality of the situation is I'm an associate, I'm at the beginning/midlevel of my career and have been able to have a lot of reach and thought leadership on this subject that I might not have had.
Q: Has that translated into business?
A: Yes, in fact I get a pretty steady stream of new clients. From a presentation I gave, I just received a new architect client who needs contracts, and wanted to integrate sustainable design provisions into her contracts. I'm hoping that, really, once we come out of this terrible recession that we're in and the building trades get their feet back, it will result in an even greater degree of work.
Q: Tell me about the green think tank that you're also involved in.
A: I am working on creating a green building policy institute. There's been a lot of policy made in this area over the past two years, and not a lot of policy analysis on whether the regulations being put in place are good regulations, whether they're effective in achieving environmental goals. Whether they are costly, inhibitive to development. There's just not a lot of data. So, I am in the process of trying to bring together resources and educational institutions in support of this effort. That will happen, I think, over the course of the next year or two.
Q: You say you're one of the few women working in this field.
A: The green field, just like the construction field, is really very male dominated. And it's really a tragedy in that this is a growing area of business. This is where good both middle-class and upper-class jobs are going to come from, and women need to be a part of that in order to better serve their families.
Shari Shapiro
Title: Environmental law associate, Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel L.L.P. in Center City.
Age: 33.
Education: B.A., Brown University, 1997;
J.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2005.
