Candice Kollar, LEED AP
Candice partners with her clients at a strategic level to define and meet objectives, develop a brand voice and maximize the effectiveness of marketing communications. She brings a whole-systems perspective to her branding and communications practice, which includes expertise in building science, green building products, policy, rating systems and sustainable business operations. A green building ‘early adopter,’ Candice became a LEED Accredited Professional in 2004. She has a technical understanding of a wide range of green building and complimentary clean and green efficiency technologies. As an active participant, she has keenly observed the green building and cleantech industries from a marketing perspective for more than a decade. She keeps her finger on the pulse of the market through meaningful engagement with her extensive network of leading-edge practitioners, influencers, manufacturers, and media in green building and sustainable business. In addition, she regularly attends technical trainings, conferences and seminars about new developments in clean and green technologies to feed her insatiable curiosity about how everything is hitched to everything else and, more importantly, how high-impact solutions to our most pressing problems can be accelerated through business.She personally oversees all strategic and creative work at Kollar Design where she routinely demonstrates her innate ability to configure custom teams of diverse talents and lead them and her clients through complex processes to achieve outstanding results. Her work in branding and design has been recognized with awards for excellence by Western Art Director’s Club, American Corporate Identity, Print Design Annual and Summit Awards International. Legacy clients include a host of innovative companies in San Francisco and Silicon Valley including Adobe, Macromedia, Apple, Cisco System, Charles Schwab, Gap Stores and Esprit.
Candice has been driven by a goal to create a more sustainable world since linking her career and her passion during a 3-year intensive leadership program with Learning as Leadership in 1999. This discovery catalyzed her shift from freelance design for fashion and technology companies to being at the heart of her own impact-based organization where she could choose clients and teammates who share her social and environmental values. With the support of Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center, Candice dove into the study of business and Kollar Design was launched from the Renaissance’s Business Incubator program nearly two decades ago. In 2002 she narrowed her focus to bringing strategic branding and design to companies demonstrating leadership in green building and cleantech.
As a theatre major with an emphasis on stage and lighting design at University of Detroit Mercy and Western Michigan University, what she enjoyed most about working in the Theatre was the collaborative teamwork among creative and technical teammates which parallels her work today. She is a self-starter by nature and developed her expertise in marketing communications, branding and design through applied independent study and apprenticing to the best-of-the-best master practitioners.
An active member of USGBC-Northern California Chapter for a decade and running, she currently serves on the Chapter’s Sustainable Neighborhoods Committee. Other leadership positions include: Founding Board Member of Bay Area BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies), Steering Committee for Fast Company’s Local Company of Friends and Meetup Organizer/Community Co-organizer, San Francisco Cohousing Group.
Candice has been a guest lecturer/presenter for business and educational organizations on topics ranging from building a brand in the green building space, green business practices and sustainable design. For diversion she sings and performs with Mark Growden’s community service-orientated Calling All Choir and fiddles around with a Turkish lute.
- Principal, Kollar Design, Ultimate can-doer
- Green building/cleantech market expert and advocate
- Resourceful idea person, Award-winning designer
- Amazing team builder/Cat herder/Orchestra conductor
- USGBC-NCC Sustainable Neighborhoods Committee member
James Kalin, LEED AP
James has been using media in innovative ways to communicate sustainable development and green building technologies, concepts and practices for decades. He is well-known for bringing engaging immersive interactive technology to the green building space as producer of many highly successful virtual tour case studies of green buildings and sustainable development for clients across the country.James’ experience includes working with Maxis, the developers of SimCity, and a sabbatical at the Santa Fe Institute working on desktop computer tools for simulation of sustainable human and natural communities. He is also an expert in commercial urban agriculture, with an emphasis on the integration of commercial urban ag with green building design and renovation. He is the founder of the Sustainable Commercial Urban Farm Incubator (SCUFI) program. Candice and James first teamed up as study-buddies back in 2004. They drilled each other with a flip chart in James’ back yard in El Cerrito and took a cross-country green green building road trip as part of their independent study for the LEED exam. Since then they have collaborated on a wide range of projects in the interest of advancing green building and sustainable urban agriculture.James produced the first straw-bale building conference, ever, in the early 70s and is recognized among green building leaders as a highly creative thinker. Using technology to communicate green building practices and policies is a life-long passion and apparently it rubs off. His daughter is a recent graduate of the green architecture program at Carnegie Mellon University.- New media innovator
- Green building guru
- Sustainable urban agriculture expert
- Known for out-of-the-box, highly creative solutions
- All around nice guy
Rochelle Seltzer
Rochelle has successfully led branding and re-branding efforts for scores of start-ups and established companies including professional services firms, B2B companies and large non-profits. With over 30 years of experience in all aspects of marketing communications, including 26 years as Principal of Boston-based design firm, Seltzer, Rochelle has turned her focus to Design Strategy.Design Strategy sets the course for the development of creative work that meets specific business objectives and builds trusted brands. Rochelle is a passionate advocate of the Design Strategy process, an essential prerequisite to high-impact creative work.She is a regular speaker at national design conferences and at design industry events on the subject of Design Strategy. She teaches undergraduate and post-graduate designers the principles of Design Strategy and how strategy integrates with creativity.Rochelle and her teams have been recognized with numerous awards for strategic communications, branding and design and have been published in the industry’s leading design books and publications.She has served on the Board of The Boston Club, one of the largest organizations of women executives and professional leaders in the Northeast and is an active member of AIGA, the professional association for design. Rochelle received her B.F.A. degree from Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, PA.Rochelle also has a consulting practice for individuals from all walks of life to help them accelerate creativity in all facets of their business and personal lives.- Design Strategy Expert
- 30 years experience in branding and Marketing Communications
- Creativity Coach
Steve Price, LEED AP
Steve communicates urban design principles to the public through photo-realistic illustration. Using photo-editing and 3D modeling software, he modifies photographs of existing landscapes to create before-and-after visualizations of change. Clients for Steve’s visualization services have included cities, urban designer firms, community development corporations, transportation agencies, environmental groups, foundations, universities, and neighborhood groups. He has participated in numerous urban design charrettes across the country and has worked with most of America’s leading New Urban designers and transportation planners.Steve knows his stuff. He is the author of an interactive online tool introducing the basic principles of New Urbanism for the Congress for New Urbanism, an online presentation explaining “What are Form-Based Codes” for the Form-Based Codes Institute, and the Form-Based Codes article on Wikipedia. In addition his illustrations have appeared in numerous books on progressive urban development. He is a Founding Board Member of the Form-Based Codes Institute, a long-time member of CNU, has chaired a city design review board and served as a city planning commissioner. Leadership positions include past Chair of the Urban Growth Subcommittee of the San Francisco Chapter of the Sierra Club and Chair of the Ohlone Greenway Committee among others. His work has appeared in scores of prestigious publications and his awards are, frankly, just too numerous to mention. Steve also has a fine art background. His early career as a technical illustrator included working with legacy clients including Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Logitech and Fujitsu.- New Urbanism subject matter expert
- Accomplished illustrator, author, artist
- Computer visualization wizard
- Civil servant; Relentless activist for a better built environment
- Man of many talents