Proud to be green before green was good

Jennifer Languell COURTESY PHOTO Jennifer Languell was green long before green was hip.

And now that green is "in," the founder and president of Trifecta Construction Solutions is riding a wave of public awareness and interest that has made her not only an industry leader but a television personality as well.

Trifecta bills itself as a consulting firm that helps builders, developers and commercial contractors navigate through the green building and sustainability disciplines. Ms. Languell and her four-person staff also work with local governments on green projects.

"I've been doing this for 14 years," she says. "Back when I first got started and you talked about green projects, people would say, 'green what?' Those of us who pursued green initiatives were thought of as tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, freaky people. Times have definitely changed."

Trifecta works with clients to define their "green goals" and guide them through the documentation process when they apply for certification under stringent environmental standards.

"Home builders, for example, can take several approaches to the green concept," she says. "Some simply want to do something that can be certified as green and use that as a differentiator from their competitors. They may do it for a single project. Then we have clients that embrace green as a cultural corporate shift and want to go green across the board."

While green is an encompassing term, Ms. Languell's work involves matters of sustainability, conserving valuable resources, reducing energy and water consumption, protecting wildlife and reducing waste. An additional benefit is the goodwill that green projects engender, thereby enhancing the developer's reputation as a responsible corporate citizen.

Ms. Languell says Trifecta is a leading certifier of green homes in the state under Green Home Certification Standards set forth by the Florida Green Building Coalition. Since its inception in 2003, Trifecta has helped "hundreds and hundreds" of clients with green issues, she says. She declines to release revenue figures, but she says the struggling economy has definitely affected Trifecta's business. "We are down significantly from two years ago," she says.

But she's convinced that business will rebound — and the key to the turnaround, she insists, will be baby boomers.

"There are about 80 million baby boomers right now," she says. "About 40 million of them are what we call 'green boomers'... in many cases what we would call the original hippies. They've always been concerned about the environment and our resources, even when it wasn't trendy."

Ms. Languell's work has earned her wide recognition. She recently was re-elected to a second term as president of the Florida Green Building Coalition. She also received the Urban Land Institute of Southwest Florida's Pathfinder Award in recognition of her vision and leadership in sustainability.

Ms. Languell's ebullient personality and engaging speaking style (along with her signature flowing tresses) have made her a bit of a media sensation as well. She has appeared on "CNN Headline News," HGTV and CNBC. But the defining moment of her media career occurred in a lightning-bolt moment some two years ago.

"I got a call on a Friday afternoon asking me if I would come to New York for an audition on Monday for the Discovery Channel," she says. "They told me that someone at Discovery had seen a tape of me doing a presentation."

She auditioned and was selected to be one of the hosts of "Discovery Project Earth," the channel's environmental series. She describes the next two years as "pure insanity."

"I was gone all the time," she says. "We went all over the world. We flew to Greenland, to London to Copenhagen — we went everywhere."

It was difficult, she concedes, to balance her television work and her commitment to Trifecta. "It meant working 24/7," she says.

The series was to run five years, but it is on hiatus, perhaps permanently, because of budgetary constraints.

A self-styled Navy brat, Ms. Languell was born in San Diego. She was drawn to the Sunshine State by the engineering programs at the University of Florida, where she received her undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering in 1995. She later earned a master's degree and a doctorate at the university.

She became acquainted with Southwest Florida while making a presentation to the Bonita Bay Group several years back and decided it was the ideal location because of its robust — at the time — building activity and because she also is very much "a beach person." She had been working with a partner, but they separated and she began Trifecta nearly seven years ago.

The 37-year-old Dr. Languell, who is single, is confounded when asked what occupies her spare time because "there just isn't any." She conducts more than 100 seminars, training sessions and demonstrations each year, and she is sought as a speaker at national and international conferences on green initiatives.

"I don't want it to sound like I have any complaints, because I do not," she says. "I love what I do and I believe in what I do."