Leadership Bios

Charles Szoradi: Eco Academy

Charlie brings multiple decades of hands on experience to the culture of sustainable living and cost-savings for home design and remodeling. He focuses on ‘high performance’ residential architecture, and in the early 90s, he wrote his Masters of Architecture thesis on sustainable design, entitled ‘Eco-Humanism’. He has taken a leadership role at the national and regional level. In 2009, Charlie was elected to the Board of the Sustainable Business Network and selected as a member of the Green Economy Task Force, with direct participation on the Capitol Hill Delegation. Charlie is the founder and President of GREENandSAVE, which was chosen as one of the finalists of the Sustainability Awards, and he also serves as the Chief Instructor of the company’s Eco Academy. From the cover profile of Inventors Digest Magazine to the Energy Expert for US Magazine, Charlie has simply dedicated his career to green innovation.

Charlie was inspired by the potential of environmentally sensitive architecture to become accessible to mainstream Americans. Rather than just defaulting to techniques from 1970s technology and aesthetics, he created a platform to produce active/passive integrated systems. The design solutions focus on function, style, significant cost-savings, and environmental sustainability. Charlie encourages the adaptive re-use of existing structures and materials, all while maintaining an overall aesthetic that appeals to the traditional as well as contemporary aesthetics. Charlie, his wife Cynthia, and their son have recently completed the transformation of a formerly in-efficient 1950s residence that they were able to ‘re-use’ and transform rather than tear down. The home focuses on saving money as well as the environment, and it is one of the most energy efficient homes in America.

Charlie is a sought-after thought leader and speaker on adaptive re-use and sustainable design with appearances at a diverse range of leading institutions such as the Green Building Council, Brain Reserve Think Tank, and the Wharton Business School. He has served over multiple years as the Senior Lecturer at the University of the Arts, where he has created programs such as Urbitec, which focus on innovative product design through recycling and re-use. He has also been featured in a documentary film that received the Director's Award at the Black Mariah Film Festival. The film specifically profiles his vision and follows the process of adaptive re-use in converting a massive 22,000 square foot abandoned church complex into a mixed use residential and commercial property. Charlie has also served as a consultant to the Philadelphia Office of Recycling across multiple years. He created the education kiosk program and the website as the cornerstone of the interactive marketing initiative.

Charlie conceived and produced a pilot Eco-Culture/Recycling show “Fix the Hut” in 1994. The show was the culmination of over twenty-five interview segments shot across the country over a two-year period. The show focused specifically on people that had created innovative habitats, furniture, fashion, and lifestyles related to adaptive re-use and environmental sustainability. This interest in communicating through eco-education programs, speaking engagements, and media has coincided with Charlie’s ongoing work in architecture and real estate development. Charlie has purchased over 200,000 sq. ft. of urban space that he has had a hand in converting from ‘left for ruin’ factories, warehouses, and schools into mixed-use residential and commercial property. Transforming neighborhoods and salvaging urban landscape has been an integral part of overall sustainability in his career.

Charlie’s early inspiration to focus on sustainability came at the end of the 1970s when he sat at a young age in a gas line with his Dad during the gas crisis. His father, who is also an architect, introduced him to colleagues that were then pioneering active and passive solar powered houses. He learned that Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House, and Charlie teamed up with two friends at St. Albans School for Boys and proceeded to build ‘Omega – The Boat of the Future’ and subsequently won the Grade School Science Fair Popular Prize with the solar powered ship. Years later, major influences have also included working in Northern California’s bay area, working in Japan for the celebrated eco-architect Kenya Maruyama, living in Eastern Europe hubs like Budapest and Prague, and rural villages and Amish communities that rely almost exclusively on sustainable living practices.

Over his academic and professional career, Charlie has traveled extensively throughout Asia, Africa, Central and North America, and Central and Eastern Europe, where he has studied specifically how people build cost-effective and environmentally sensitive homes and communities. Charlie grew up in Washington, DC and graduated from St. Albans School for Boys. He then earned his undergraduate degree in Architecture from the University of Virginia and went on to earn a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. Charlie is a registered architect and currently lives in Greater Philadelphia with his wife and son in their self-sustaining home that inspired the development of ‘GREENandSAVE’.

GREEN and SAVE: Support Team

The Green and Save support team consists of a high powered group of dedicated researchers, writers, programmers and designers, all combined with business analysts that hold MBAs. The Return on Investment (ROI) calculations, ongoing research, and whole property approach is what differentiates Green and Save in the marketplace as a pioneer.

The Green and Save ROI calculations are based on multiple years of comprehensive local and national research and a combination of reports from the U.S. Department of Energy, the EPA, ENERGY STAR® for Homes Program, US Green Building Council’s LEED for Homes Program, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), International Energy Conservation Code, PLUS information directly from University Studies, Architects, Manufacturer Specifications, Distributors, seasoned Builders and Installers, and Homeowners with actual Performance Feedback. The ROI calculations are intended to serve as a guide to help homeowners see the hierarchy of performance and payback. Given variations in energy consumption, house size, results will naturally vary. The Home Efficiency Check up and the resulting reports are derivative of the extensive research, and give homeowner the power to act.