Marta Schantz

Director - Sustainability at AvalonBay Communities

Speaker

Marta Schantz is Director of Sustainability and Reporting at AvalonBay Communities (AVB). In this capacity, Marta drives sustainability performance improvement and reporting across existing communities and new developments/acquisitions, focusing on operational and embodied emissions reductions, energy efficiency, water efficiency, waste diversion, and physical climate risk mitigation. She brings deep experience in the real estate sustainability market to lead and collaborate across organizations and stakeholders to achieve program goals and successes. Recent focus areas range from embodied carbon reductions in new developments, to resident engagement communications, to incorporating sustainability in due diligence, to asset-level resilience assessments.

Prior to her time at AVB, Marta was Co-Executive Director of the Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate at the Urban Land Institute (ULI), which leads the global real estate industry in creating buildings and places where people and the environment thrive. Before that role, Marta was the Senior Vice President for the Greenprint Center for Building Performance at ULI, a research center and worldwide alliance of leading real estate leaders committed to improving the environmental performance of the global real estate industry – reducing carbon emissions, and increasing building value.

Before her time at ULI, Marta worked at Waypoint Energy providing energy efficiency services to utilities and real estate, at Booz Allen Hamilton on the federal energy consulting team, and at the US Department of Energy’s Office of Cost Analysis.

Marta is a LEED Green Associate and a Fitwel Ambassador. She serves on the Advisory Board for the Carbon Leadership Forum and on the Steering committee for the US DOE Better Buildings Commercial Real Estate Sector. She is the Chair of the Alexandria VA Environmental Policy Commission. Marta has been recognized as a City of Alexandria VA “40 Under 40,” an Energy + Environmental Leader 100, as well as an Association of Energy Services Professionals “One to Watch.”

She holds a B.S. in Biological Engineering with a minor in Science Policy from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.