In this special guest episode I speak with Sandra Lupien, who is the Director of MassTimber@MSU, a program at Michigan State University that harnesses outreach, communications, research, education, and partnerships to advance mass timber construction and manufacture in Michigan and the surrounding region. Sandra has two decades of diverse policy, communications, external affairs, and leadership experience in the non-profit, public, and private sectors, most of it working at the intersection of climate change, natural resource policy, and equitable and sustainable community development.
While pursuing a mid-career Master of Public Policy at University of California Berkeley, Sandra caught the mass timber bug in 2016, which led her to do at least three things: 1) research what it would take to pivot her small beetle-kill pine furniture company to mass timber manufacturer; 2) to write her Master’s thesis “Removing Barriers to Cross-Laminated Timber Manufacture and Adoption in California: A gamechanger for forests, wildfire, and climate;” and 3) to seize the opportunity to harness her knowledge and passion to help advance mass timber construction and manufacture in Michigan – her home state – in this new position at MSU.
Production by Deeelicious Beats
Music "Game Play" by Quality Quest
Podcast is a Mass Timber Construction Journal Production
www.masstimberconstruction.com
Sponsors of the Podcast:
International Association for Mass Timber Construction (IAMTC)
The International Association for Mass Timber Construction aims to promote and deliver value to its members and associated stakeholders through an all-encompassing approach to advocacy, thought-leadership, development for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing sectors, provide education, training/teaching and research in establishing a global mass timber construction sector across the five contents of the world.