PNWER Summit — Resilience Plenary Speaker

I'm looking forward to our Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER) Summit coming up next month (July) in Calgary, Canada. For disaster resilience we have one plenary speaker on Tuesday who will be addressing all of the attendees on the topic. See information below on his background and the topic. I'm reading his book now. It exposes what "built to code" really means.

If you can attend, there is still time to register for the the summit. Go to this link for the full agenda and registration information.

Aris Papadopoulos
Founder and Chair of Resilience Action Fund

Aris Papadopoulos is founder and chair of Resilience Action Fund and Resilience Action Fund (International). He authored the book: "Resilience — The Ultimate Sustainability: Lessons from Failing to Develop a Stronger and Safer Built Environment". He is a World Trade Center 9-11 survivor.

Aris holds the position of Distinguished Expert in Resilience at Florida International University’s Extreme Events Institute (FIU-EEI), serves on the Board of the United Nations Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies (UN-ARISE), and was founding chair (2011) of the UN International Strategy on Disaster Reduction (UN-ISDR) Private Sector Advisory Group. He represented the private sector at the 3rd UN Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction and played an active role in developing the 'Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-30.' He advocated the cause of resilience and disaster risk reduction in the built environment before two UN Global Platform Conferences and at Rio+20.

Aris has 35 years of experience in the construction, materials and energy industries. He chairs the board of ST Equipment & Technology (STET), a worldwide provider of industrial waste reclamation and water conservation equipment and technology solutions. In 2014 he retired from Titan America, a U.S. building materials company, after serving as CEO for 20 years.

He was founding chair of the Concrete Joint Sustainability Initiative (2009) and past chair of the Portland Cement Association. In 2013 he received the American Concrete Institute’s Sustainability Award. He served on the board of CTL Group, a construction research and consultancy firm, the editorial board of the U.S. Green Concrete Council, and the advisory board of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub.

Aris earned bachelor's and master's Degrees from MIT in Chemical Engineering (1978) and an MBA from Harvard University (1985). He lives in Miami, Florida and is a steward at the St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church.