Sustainable Breakfast Series

media release: Join us at Holy Wisdom Monastery for a tour of their facility including their LEED platinum Monastery building, 300 kW solar array, and newly reopened geothermal heated/cooled retreat and guest house.

Agenda

• Networking & Breakfast 8:00—8:30AM
• Tour 8:30—9:30AM
• Networking 9:30—10:00AM

Since 1953, Holy Wisdom Monastery retreat and meeting center in Middleton, WI has prioritized sustainability. For more than 70 years, the Benedictine sisters have cared for the Monastery land from restoring the former farmland to native prairie and savanna to earning the title of highest-rated LEED-NC building in the US to date. By the end of 2024, the Monastery will produce 100% of their energy needs onsite from renewable resources. With that, they will be the only net zero energy retreat in Wisconsin and one of only a handful in all of North America. Learn how they will reach that goal and more through touring their campus with us.

SPEAKERS:

Toby Grabs is the director of operations at Holy Wisdom Monastery.

Toby is an avid outdoors person and feels more at home outside than in. He has an undergrad degree in biology and masters certificate in environmental education. He works as the director of operations for Holy Wisdom Monastery, a retreat and meeting center open to all in Middleton. He is overseeing the Net Zero Energy Initiative at the Monastery. In his free time he likes to hike, bike, and paddle. Toby is passionate about wilderness and land health also volunteers on the board of directors of Riverland Conservancy, a conservation land trust with properties in Wisconsin and Iowa.

Mark Hanson is the director of sustainable services at Hoffman Planning, Design & Construction Inc.

Mark's work focuses on sustainable design and project delivery, net zero energy projects with solar PV and batteries, daylighting design, coordination of energy modeling and commissioning, and monitoring and verification. He has participated in 18 LEED certified projects encompassing over two million square feet with many attaining platinum and gold ratings. He recently authored The Inevitable Solar School: Building the Sustainable Schools of the Future, Today (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).

Mark’s professional passion is the pursuit of sustainable, affordable solar schools and other commercial buildings. This pursuit is of a continuously evolving goal as technologies emerge, our understanding of our world and our impact on it grows, and economic forces and our collective values evolve. With the arrival of affordable batteries, net zero energy buildings have become financially feasible. Energy resources, impact, and climate change are core drivers for the pursuit.

This Sustainable Breakfast Series program is sponsored by the Couillard Solar Foundation.