Bio

With 13 years of experience, Vere Shaba is a multi-award winning engineer and green building consultant who has worked for multinational engineering consulting firms including Volkswagen, AECOM and WSP before founding Greendesign Africa in 2016. For green buildings, her career began in 2010 when she was a part of the WSP-LUC-DHK winning team for the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace & Environmental Studies international design competition where the institute was to be carbon-neutral. Since then, she has been passionate about net zero green buildings that do less harm to people and to the climate and environment - understanding that Africa is the most vulnerable continent to climate change with women in Africa being disproportionately impacted. As an ESG and green building consultant, Vere is experienced in green building certifications of office, hospitality, healthcare, retail, education, industrial, museum and precinct projects across the continent. The first Green Star project that she submitted to the Green Building Council South Africa as the Green Star Accredited Professional was awarded a South African Property Owners Association award for Overall Winner and her most notable project to date is the Green Star precinct certification of 600,000 sqm of Waterfall City in South Africa that is currently being targeted. As South Africa’s largest property development and the largest mixed-use development in Africa, Waterfall City is located on 2,200-hectares of land and has a Science-Based Target for greenhouse gas emissions reduction by 2030. In 2020, Vere was invited to support the Middle East & Africa Regional Networks of the World Green Building Council. In 2021, she was then appointed as the Head of Africa Programmes for the World Green Building Council. In this role, she led the World Green Building Council's Africa regional programmes with the African Union, C40 Cities, International Finance Corporation and UNFCCC High-Level Climate Champions. She developed a Middle East & North Africa focal point for Egypt and Tunisia and facilitated the membership of Nigeria, Ethiopia, Botswana and Zimbabwe resulting in the Africa Regional Network growing from 9 to 15 GBCs and 300 million to 700 million people represented across the continent in her one year tenure at World Green Building Council - before stepping down in 2023 to refocus on green building certifications and to support Member States of the African Union with the first global stocktake of the Paris Agreement at COP28.