Build Change

To create a global movement for resilient housing using Build Change’s demonstrated history of catalyzing impact in some of the toughest and most disaster-prone housing markets in the world.

I work with my largely women-led team at Build Change to influence global development policy by making retrofitting (home strengthening) a major consideration for resilient housing efforts. After 17 years, 24 countries, and 600,000 lives directly impacted, we are now taking our disaster-resilient housing movement to the U.S. Our vision is necessarily ambitious: while many organizations in the U.S. are working on housing, none are addressing the need for investment in disaster-resilience, a key and urgent priority outlined in President Biden’s Infrastructure Plan. Our goal is audacious: build a coalition of housing advocates and implementers to bolster the U.S. resilient housing sector through comprehensive homeowner awareness campaigns and creative avenues for financing and incentivization opportunities.

None of these big ideas will bring sustained impact without amplification and widespread awareness. If selected as an Elevate Prize winner, I would work collaboratively with the Elevate Prize network to elevate the cause of resilient housing across multiple U.S. channels and define program areas and partners in the U.S.

I’m a bricklayer, a first generation college graduate with a Ph.D, an engineer and entrepreneur, the founder of a global organization, a champion for resilient housing, a single mom, a homeowner, and a female head of household. I have dedicated the past 17 years to developing and scaling a woman-led solution to a man-made problem. 

My journey as a safe housing advocate began in 2002 when I traveled to India as a Fulbright Fellow - an experience that led me to realize that earthquakes don’t kill people, poorly constructed buildings do. I learned so much from talking with homeowners and formulated a theory of change that is the basis of everything we do at Build Change to overcome all three barriers to adoption of safer housing: people, money, and technology. 

We’ve successfully delivered programs in 24 countries utilizing Build Change’s three-pronged approach of addressing people/policy, money and technology in the disaster resilience context with a focus on women. These programs have shown that: 1) it is not only imperative but possible to improve homes to withstand disasters, and 2) investments in resilience will yield significant and measurable short- and long-term benefits that balance or exceed the costs.

Resilient housing has become an urgent national issue. In 2020, there were 22 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters across the diverse geography of the U.S., costing a combined $95B in damages and untold economic and societal effects. Across the U.S. many disaster-threatened properties are located in areas that suffered from historic redlining practices - making this a racial justice issue. The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the importance of access to a safe home that can address basic needs, protect families, and be a place of growth and opportunity. 

Our nimble team wears many hats in pursuit of our vision: Every home is disaster resilient. We educate homeowners on housing vulnerabilities and facilitate access to financing to make their homes resilient. We develop accessible and tailored technology solutions that navigate users through the full construction value chain. We provide homeowners with cash grants and the power to actively participate in the decision-making process of their home design and construction. We train and hire local builders, engineers, and other construction professionals to apply better building practices to on-the-ground projects. We engage with government officials and other key stakeholders to put resilient housing on budgets and policy agendas.

Most people don’t need new homes - they need better, more resilient homes. Extreme weather events don’t have to be destructive or deadly. In fact, the majority of deaths can be attributed to the collapse of poorly designed and built housing units. As urbanization continues to rise and the stock of vulnerable houses increases, there's an urgent need to invest massively in upgrading existing housing. 

Build Change simultaneously addresses the resilient housing problem with a sustainable top-down and bottom-up systems change approach. We disrupt the status quo of disaster capitalism by returning the power to the people’s hands - the homeowners and families who lost their homes in disaster or are living in homes vulnerable to future disaster - and enabling them to drive their construction process and make decisions about their homes. 

We have effectively changed the narrative in the harshest environments from considering women as victims of disasters to acknowledging structural inequalities and women’s capacities to actively build their resilience. Our team’s innovative use of technology, expert fluency on community building, influence on government policies and budgets, and guided facilitation to expedite access to financing and benefits for resilient housing has revolutionized the entire industry of resilient housing.

Build Change was founded on the belief that safe housing is a human right. Since 2004, Build Change has helped safeguard more than $1.5B in housing infrastructure assets across Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia Pacific, protecting and improving the lives of 600,000 people through building new or strengthening more than 90,000 buildings. Our experience has shown that resilient housing initiatives can be transformative and produce permanent change: they can save lives, protect the vulnerable, create jobs and galvanize economies.

Build Change’s impact on humanity is possible through our focus on people/policy, money and technology. In Colombia, Build Change has successfully reached national scale by supporting the government in placing the structural resilience of existing vulnerable housing at the center of the national home improvement program and providing training to capacitate local operators. In the Philippines, Build Change demonstrated market demand for retrofit loans, proved that it is achievable within the borrowing capacity of low-income families, and identified private financial institutions willing to partner in launching resilient housing loan products. Our comprehensive technology platform provides homeowners, builders and government officials with access to an online library of disaster-resilient resources and assessment tools.