AHC Fall 2025 | Sustainable Horizons: Continuing the Conversation on Healthcare Design for a Greener Future

Eric Corey Freed is an award-winning architect, author, and global speaker. As Principal and Director of Sustainability for CannonDesign, he leads the healthcare, education, and commercial teams toward low-carbon, healthy, regenerative buildings for over 30 million square feet a year. For two decades, he was Founding Principal of organicARCHITECT, a visionary design leader in biophilic and regenerative design.

His past roles include Vice President of the International Living Future Institute and Chief Community Officer of EcoDistricts, both nonprofits pushing innovative new paradigms for deep green buildings and communities. He serves on the board of Design Museum Everywhere, whose mission is to “bring the transformative power of design to all.” Eric is the author of 12 books, including “Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies” and “Circular Economy for Dummies.” In 2012, he was named one of the 25 “Best Green Architecture Firms” in the US, and one of the “Top 10 Most Influential Green Architects.” In 2017, he was named one of Build’s American Architecture Top 25. He’s one of the 2021 Environment + Energy Leaders and in 2024, he was named the Net Zero Trailblazer for Innovation. He holds a prestigious LEED Fellow award from the US Green Building Council.

Jeramie believes in the power of collaboration to achieve a sensitive balance between user experience, aesthetics, safety, and sustainability in the landscape—especially true for healthcare landscapes that foster calm and healing environments.

As a principal and owner at Mayer/Reed, Inc., an interdisciplinary design studio based in Portland, Oregon, Jeramie leads the firm’s landscape architecture practice. His experience at Oregon Health & Science University includes designing spaces for patients, visitors, and researchers, with projects such as the Vista Pavilion, Doernbecher Children’s Hospital Addition, Knight Cancer Research Building, and Robertson Collaborative Life Sciences Building & Skourtes Tower.

After years in large firm executive management positions and successfully leading large project teams, Marjorie now helps firms develop business plans that leverage their own unique talents and value. Her Healthcare design solutions are steered by community health & wellness outcomes, calming experiences, a sustainable future and dedicated owners that taught her to listen. She helped draft the NCARB Analysis of Practice Industry survey, sits on their Leadership Institute and Futures Collaborative Committee 2022-2026. At the 2023 Futures Symposium she moderated the Impact of AI on the Architectural Industry panel and helped develop NCARBs future competencies. At the 2025 Symposium she will moderate the Impact of Neuroscience on Wellbeing and Architectural Design panel and lead the discussion on HSW definition changes.  Marjorie chairs the AIA Academy of Architecture for Health Research Initiatives committee, leading the development of benchmarking protocols and metrics on award winning projects presenting at HCD 2020-25.

Mark Fretz serves as Co-Director of the Institute for Health in the Built Environment within the College of Design and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Oregon. The Institute harnesses design thinking and interdisciplinary scientific collaboration to create innovative strategies for resilient built environments that support the health of individuals, communities, and the planet. These solutions are implemented through Build Health, a network of committed industry partners.

Before entering academia, Mark held the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and worked as a designer across a range of sectors, including healthcare, housing, workplace, master planning, and product design. His career bridges the disciplines of science, health, and design. His research and teaching focus on the often-unseen elements of the built environment that influence human health—from microbes and molecules to energy and carbon.

Lisa offers 15+ years of leadership in developing, designing, and constructing projects using mass timber and industrialized construction technologies. As a recognized subject matter expert, Lisa is active on several industry and professional advisory boards supporting mass timber research and market development for government, non-profit and academic organizations in the US. Utilizing a broad range of industry experience she now supports Swinerton’s project teams to achieve cost and schedule efficiency enabling the use of mass timber and expanding the market for more sustainable innovation.

Jose focuses on creating a design vision that reflects the client’s goal within the parameters of site, entitlements, and budget.

As a Design Partner for NBBJ’s healthcare projects, Jose’s resume of projects includes numerous award winning academic medical centers. He strongly believes in the power of design to transform the experience of healthcare environments. He values the insights and perspectives from a team environment to fuel creativity and innovative problem solving. He strives to form deep collaborative settings with clients and builders in the creations of aspiring designs.

As a Principal and Senior Designer in his current position at ZGF Architects, David Staczek is an architect whose 33 years of design experience includes a broad portfolio of work, from healthcare facilities, to office buildings and financial institutions, Federal work for the VA, US Army Corps of Engineers and the State Department, to pedestrian bridges and multimodal centers and multi-family residential projects.

David has led the design of major healthcare projects with leading institutions and healthcare systems around the country including Stanford University; Cincinnati Children’s Hospital; University of Illinois, Chicago; UNC Health; SCL Health; and the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

Kyle Steuck has more than 17 years of experience designing innovative structures with unique performance requirements in healthcare and other sectors. He leads Degenkolb’s mass timber practice and served as Structural Engineer of Record for the firm’s first mass timber project, the Quileute Tribal School. Kyle has led or provided technical support for Degenkolb’s mass timber projects in healthcare, education, and workplace projects and participates in research activities through the Tallwood Design Institute REACTS consortium. Kyle was a founding member and past chair of the Structural Engineers Association of Washington (SEAW)’s Sustainability Committee and currently serves as president of the Washington Chapter of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI).

Mary Beth Welty has been an AIA/AAH Research Committee member since 2020 and helped to originate the clinic benchmarking subcommittee in 2021.  A healthcare planner with 10+ years of experience in over 80 different inpatient and outpatient departments ranging from behavioral health to ambulatory care and multiprocedural specialty clinics, she has been critical to the AIA/AAH clinic benchmarking effort.  For 8 years she has led benchmarking processes and Evidenced Based Design research efforts both within the AIA and in her role as a healthcare planner.  Mary Beth is an expert at leveraging efficiencies and software to streamline workflows and solve problems.  She is passionate about benchmarking healthcare projects because she knows that it allows our industry to better understand the data we already have by analyzing current and past spaces and using that information help to inform our future projects, and is excited about the potential knowledge and ideas that benchmarking projects can provide.

Frances has over 22 years of experience in leading the interior scope of small to large-scale projects, developing staff, and building client relationships.

As a senior interior designer, Frances brings years of design leadership on projects ranging from 70,000 SF tenant improvements to 1.25 million SF tower campuses. Grounded in the belief that people are the most crucial piece of the design process, she fosters a collaborative design approach based on active listening, data gathering, and design research. With extensive experience in diverse project types, Frances offers an efficient yet highly creative design iteration process with a robust technical design foundation.

*All speakers are subject to change.