USGBC Announces Re-imagined Vision For GBCI

GBCI was founded in 2008 to drive implementation of LEED and for more than a decade, has proved instrumental in ensuring LEED remains the world’s most widely used green building program. Thanks to GBCI’s stewardship, there are now more than 104,000 registered and certified LEED commercial projects, nearly 2 million registered and certified residential units and more than 205,000 professionals transforming and implementing LEED around the world.

During the organization’s first generation, GBCI inspired a greater sense of awareness and understanding of LEED in the global real estate, development and construction industries. But today GBCI is evolving its strategy to prepare for a major cultural shift in the sustainability field – one where the organization helps the world move from a passing societal awareness of the merits of LEED best practices, to a universal, mainstream acceleration and adoption of LEED. 

Building on LEED

During GBCI’s first generation, the organization also began focusing on how to expand on the extraordinary legacy and unparalleled pedigree of LEED. GBCI has grown to administer a suite of nearly 10 certification programs and 15 professional credentials that cover nearly every facet of the sustainability industry. From sustainable landscapes, to resilient design, to reliable and resilient power systems, to the people in buildings – these programs complement the impact of LEED and ensure GBCI is addressing the vast spectrum of sustainability challenges as it works toward a common goal of ensuring a sustainable, healthy, resilient and equitable future for all. And while LEED is still at the heart of everything GBCI does, these new programs are empowering the green building and sustainability community with tools, resources and opportunities to tackle the issues that most affect today’s communities – such as waste, equity and resilience – and to protect universal human health and wellbeing for generations to come. 

A new vision and look for a powerful and promising future

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, USGBC announced its re-imagined vision for its second generation: Healthy people in healthy places equals a healthy economy. Correspondingly, GBCI’s second generation will focus on the implementation of this vision. Healthy people in healthy places equals a healthy economy is an ambitious vision — and one that warrants an illustrative new symbol. 

GBCI’s commitment to ensuring that vision becomes a reality— to creating and maintaining a healthier world — deserves an all-encompassing identity that represents the compassionate, innovative and unified vision for the second generation of USGBC, GBCI and the green building industry as a whole. GBCI has created a confident, guiding, and sincere new brand identity that will carry the organization and its customers into a resilient, equitable and regenerative future — a future where every person has a higher purpose powered by an unequivocal access to a higher standard of living. 

GBCI cares deeply about affecting change, locally, nationally and globally. As the organization handling third-party verification services for certification and credentialing, GBCI is helping businesses demonstrate credibility, provide a metric for comparisons and add significant value. The GBCI new identity communicates an energized, optimistic and inclusive voice — one that harnesses the humanity at the heart of the green building process, embodies GBCI’s long tradition of quality and depicts its mission to inform, inspire and expand on the impact of LEED.

This new identify celebrates the accomplishments of the tens of thousands of projects and professionals around the world who rely on GBCI to deliver meaningful work to their stakeholders and advance our collective vision to ensure healthy people in healthy places in a healthy economy.