Today, I have the pleasure of sitting with Joanna Frank, the President and CEO of The Center for Active Design, an organization that promotes architecture and urban planning solutions to improve public health, and also operates the Fitwel healthy building certification system. The Center for Active Design was launched by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2012 to transform New York City’s groundbreaking Active Design program into an international movement, which has expanded today to organizations across the country and the globe, and Joanna has been tasked with the role of leading this organization since that time.

Our conversation takes us through the early days of the organization, how it began and brings us to today and how the commercial real estate industry has been responding to this and other standards.

There’s a long road ahead, but the last two years have shown us that the need for these standards will only continue to be more relevant in the future.