Build Change is the global leader in systems change for resilient housing. Build Change’s engineers, builders, coders, policy advocates, and lending partners are providing urgently needed housing solutions in the world’s most disaster-prone countries. Since 2004, Build Change, a nonprofit social innovator, has safeguarded over $2 billion in housing infrastructure assets across Asia Pacific, the Caribbean, Latin America, and North America, improving the lives of more than 1 million people and building new or retrofitting over 200,000 buildings. Learn more at buildchange.org.
No person dies in an earthquake or windstorm. All homeowners in seismic and climate risk zones have access to and awareness of incentives and subsidies for disaster-resistant construction. Governments value and enforce building codes and safe-construction practices. Communities are prepared and protected in advance of disasters.
Build Change invests in policy advocacy, access to finance, technology tools for scale, demonstration, capacity building. Independent replication by government, private sector, MFIs, and NGOs.
Founder & CEO, Build Change
Dr. Elizabeth Hausler is the Founder and CEO of Build Change and a global expert on resilient building and post-disaster reconstruction. Elizabeth’s strategic direction and leadership have grown Build Change from a few employees in 2004 to over 230 strong working on three continents in 2018. Her emphasis on rebuilding to withstand future disasters has profoundly influenced global development policy by making resilience a major consideration for reconstruction efforts.
Elizabeth’s training as a brick, block and stone mason and her extensive field experience in the developing world, including a Fulbright Scholarship in India, led Elizabeth to found Build Change in 2004 to ensure reconstruction efforts would be safe and sustainable. She is recipient of many honors, including the 2011 US Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the Schwab Foundation and, with Build Change, a 2017 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.
In 2018, she received the University of California, Berkeley’s Campanile Excellence in Achievement Award, and has been selected as the College of Engineering Commencement Speaker for 2019. Since 2014 she has been a member of the UC-Berkeley Civil and Environmental Engineering Department’s Academy of Distinguished Alumni. She holds a Ph.D. and M.S. from UC-Berkeley in Civil Engineering, as well as an M.S. degree from the University of Colorado and a B.S. from the University of Illinois. She has lectured on disaster resistant construction in venues around the world and she and Build Change’s work have been featured in some of the world’s leading media outlets, including The New York Times, BBC News, Elle Magazine, ABC News and Bloomberg Businessweek. She has written or co-authored technical resources and advocacy blogs and has served on the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Agenda Council on Risk and Resilience and the Expert Advisory Group for the Centre for Disaster Protection.
Since 2004, Build Change has safeguarded over $2 billion in housing assets across Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia Pacific, spending only $60 million, and improving the lives of over 1 million people by building or retrofitting more than 214,000 safer buildings, at a cost of $60 per safer person. In 2018, Build Change co-launched the Global Program for Resilient Housing policy with the World Bank, which promotes strengthening existing housing. In addition to influencing the post-disaster housing reconstruction policies of Indonesia, China, Haiti, Nepal, Mexico, Dominica, and St. Maarten, Build Change convinced the government of Colombia to include structural upgrades of urban housing in the recently launched Casa Digna program, and has influenced the same in Guatemala’s neighborhood improvement policy. Build Change’s use of BIM tools, AI, VR, and apps to make the construction value chain more efficient have been awarded by IBM Call for Code and featured at Autodesk University mainstage.
