Robert Watson is a global leader in the green building movement, having founded the LEED Green Building Rating system of the U.S. Green Building Council, where he is a Director and past Vice-Chairman of the organization. Watson also is the Executive Editor of GreenerBuildings.com, the one-stop website for the green design, construction and operation of commercial and institutional buildings.

Mr. Watson launched the EcoTech International Group (ETI) in 2007 to deliver integrated green building solutions to China, India and the U.S. ETI is currently providing sustainability services to dozens of projects ranging from small demonstration centers to new cities of 20,000 people.

Rob was the only foreigner honored with a Green Building Innovation Award from the Chinese Ministry of Construction in 2005 and received the 2006 International Association of Energy Engineers Professional Development award. Interiors and Sources Magazine tapped Rob as one of the top 25 Environmental Champions in the building industry. Watson was one of the top 25 newsmakers of 2003 according to Engineering News Record. The U.S. Green Building Council gave Watson the first Sacred Tree Leadership Award in 2002 for his work on the LEED system.

From 1985 to 2006, as Director of International Energy and Green Building Projects at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Mr. Watson was active in international sustainable building and cities in a dozen countries including China and Russia. With NRDC, Watson helped to improve residential building codes in Russia and managed a joint U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Agency for International Development project to promote Integrated Resource Planning in the utility sector for the North Caucasus region of Russia. He has also worked on sustainable energy and green development issues in buildings, electric utilities and transportation in over a dozen countries. Watson also advocated for sustainable energy policies and programs before international financial institutions, including the World Bank, as well as several U.S. government agencies including the U.S. Department of Energy and the EPA, to promote sustainable energy policies and programs in the developing world. Watson played an important role in developing the “Partnership for Sustainable Energy Use” for the hemisphere-wide Summit of the Americas in 1996.

Rob and his work has been featured in Hot, Flat and Crowded, The World is Flat 3.0 and several columns by Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer prize-winning author and New York Times columnist. Watson appeared in the PBS Special “Design e2” and the Sundance Channel’s “Big Ideas for a Small Planet.” Rob received his MBA from Columbia University in 2006. He also has an M.S. degree from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. from Dartmouth College where he was a Senior Fellow. He is married to architect Margaret Howard Watson and together they have a 10-year-old teacher and raison d’etre, Max.