“After more than 20 years in this industry, I’ve watched a lot of important conversations happen in parallel, designers working through their challenges, manufacturers working through theirs, and I felt these moments could be more cohesive,” Natalie reflected. “Sitting on both the BIFMA board and the IIDA board at the same time feels like a real opportunity to connect the dots and make sure we’re all moving in the same direction. There’s so much positive intent across the industry. What I want to help unlock is the infrastructure to act on it.”

Natalie sees the industry’s current moment as one defined less by motivation gaps than by structural ones. Design firms are building their own workflows and resource libraries in the absence of consistent shared systems. Manufacturer data is fragmented and, at times, difficult to discover. Incentives at the end of the procurement process can override months of thoughtful, values-driven specification work. The momentum behind initiatives like the Common Materials Framework signals that the industry knows alignment is possible; what it needs, she argues, is infrastructure to make that alignment durable.

“The motivation in our industry is absolutely in the right place,” she said. “People are doing remarkable work to figure out better systems, better workflows, better ways to communicate. But when every firm is building something slightly different, it creates real friction — for designers trying to specify responsibly and for manufacturers trying to support them. I think IIDA and BIFMA both have a role to play in helping the industry anchor into shared standards and tools rather than each firm solving the same problem independently.”

Among the issues Natalie is most focused on is the rise of social health and equity as defining themes in the sustainability conversation in the built environment. She sees supply chain equity at a similar inflection point that material health and transparency and embodied carbon experienced years ago, a moment when the dialogue is building, the standards are forming, and the industry’s response will shape practice for years to come. Her work on the Design for Freedom Prison Labor working group at Grace Farms has given her firsthand visibility into how this conversation is developing, including the push to address forced and prison labor in AEC supply chains. She has spoken at the Design for Freedom Summit and participated in the Declare Equity pilot program, which she will share details about on a panel at Greenbuild this October.

“Social health and equity are where material health and transparency were about 10-15 years ago,” Natalie noted. “The dialogue is starting, but people are still figuring out how to measure it, how to talk about it, how to make it actionable. Now the work is to build the consistency and measurement that allows the industry to actually move.”

On BIFMA, Natalie will serve on the Outreach and Learning Committee and is also part of the association’s newly formed social health and equity committee, which is bringing manufacturers together to prepare for evolving standards in supply chain transparency.

The IIDA Annual Meeting, where Natalie’s board appointment was announced, also celebrated the induction of four new IIDA College of Fellows — Stacey Crumbaker, FIIDA; Diana Farmer-Gonzalez, FIIDA; Amie Keener, FIIDA; and Lois Wellwood, FIIDA — and marked the beginning of incoming International Board President Bill Bouchey’s term.

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