NESEA’s Commitment to Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

NESEA’s mission is to advance the adoption of sustainable energy practices in the built environment by cultivating a community where practitioners share, collaborate and learn; we cannot achieve that mission without honoring our commitments to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into our programming and to welcome historically underrepresented people into the community at-large.

As a reflection of these commitments, NESEA has two individuals shepherding this work: Andrea Mancino serves as our board liaison for DEI and Florence MacGregor serves as the staff point person. If you have questions, suggestions, or would like to be involved with this work, please contact Florence at fmacgregor@nesea.org.

Below are some of the steps we have taken as we continue to continue to diversity our community in terms of age, race, and gender identity and other identity markers and to make our content more accessible:

What We Offer

  • BuildingEnergy Access is a new initiative to support the work of WMBEs (women and minority-owned business enterprises) by connecting them with the resources of the NESEA community. In this cohort-based program, business owners receive custom business development services, attend industry events for education and networking, receive marketing opportunities through a spotlight program, and participate in a business-owner peer group to hone their triple bottom lines practices (people, planet, and prosperity). This program is designed to serve businesses led by people who have traditionally been underrepresented in the AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) space, including people of underrepresented gender and racial identities.

  • We offer women- and BIPOC-owned businesses a discount on sponsorship and exhibiting for our two annual conferences.

  • When we solicit proposals for conference sessions, Pro Tour projects, and other program content we ask for short statements explaining how each proposal connects to themes of equity, diversity, or social and/or environmental justice. We prioritize proposals that make a clear connection. We offer BIPOC-owned businesses scholarships for participation in Bottom Lines, our business development program.

  • A group of Bottom Lines participants, the Anti-Racist Action Group, which formed in 2020, meets regularly to strategize about combatting racism in the industry and more broadly.
     
  • We've adopted an anti-harassment policy to support the experience of our community.
     
  • We reserve space at every BuildingEnergy conference for members to organize a Diversity Caucus, a member-driven event designed by and for people who are traditionally underrepresented in the high performance building sector, the trades, and other related fields.
     
  • We offer scholarships to our programs and a volunteer work exchange program at our conferences to mitigate financial barriers to participation.
     
  • During our virtual conferences, we added a feature to allow attendees to easily share their pronouns.
     
  • At in-person events, attendees will have the option to add their pronouns to their badges. We have also standardized asking participants in our virtual meetings to add their pronouns to their display name.
     
  • Starting with BuildingEnergy Boston 2022,  we will work with venues to offer gender neutral bathrooms.
     
  • We collect basic demographic information during all event registration.
     
  • We are planning listening sessions in 2022 to gain community feedback to improve our DEI efforts.
     
  • We are expanding our Emerging Professionals program to create mentorship and workforce development programs with outreach specifically geared towards individuals from environmental justice communities or other communities who have been less represented in the high performance building community.
     
  • We use the Kate Goldstein Fund for Emerging Professionals to support specific facets of our DEI work, particularly supporting the next generation of leaders.

Past Communications

Members of the NESEA community can expect periodic updates from our Board of Directors. Here are our previous updates:

Demographics

Thousands of people engage with NESEA as members, event attendees, program participants, volunteers, sponsors, speakers, and supporters. Whenever someone registers for a NESEA event, they are presented with 4 optional demographic questions. We use these self-reported data to better understand who is participating in our in-person and online events, but as it is optional, we know it doesn't capture everyone.

The graphs below show the information we collected from event attendees who participated in an event in FY24 (July 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024).

Community

Our Mission

NESEA advances sustainability practices in the built environment by cultivating a cross-disciplinary community where practitioners are encouraged to share, collaborate and learn.

Join the Community
Become a NESEA Member Today

NESEA is the region’s leading membership organization advancing sustainable energy practices in the built environment.

Join/Renew Now