#25 Gina Ciganik

Creating Healthier Environments for Communities Worldwide

Podcast with Gina Ciganik, Chief Executive Officer, Habitable (Formerly Healthy Building Network). She discusses her background as a real estate developer and how she became interested in understanding the health impacts of building materials. She explains that there is a lack of transparency and regulation around disclosing the chemical contents of building products compared to industries like food and personal care.

The podcast explores the perceived higher costs of using healthier materials, but Gina argues that a holistic view considering factors like longevity, health costs, and environmental impacts shows that healthier materials can be cost-neutral or even cost-saving. She emphasises the need for greater awareness and a mindset shift towards simplifying material palettes and prioritising health. The podcast covers research on the significant health and environmental costs associated with certain chemicals like PFAS and microplastics from paint.

Host: Juan A. Morillas – Share Your Green Design.

Gina Ciganik is recognised as a national leader in advancing human and environmental health. A champion of equity and environmental justice, Gina is an innovator with a proven track record of creating leading-edge, nationally recognised sustainable spaces where we live, work, and play.

Prior to HBN, Gina was Vice President at a Minneapolis-St. Paul area real estate developer, where she spent two decades creating thousands of healthy, high-performance affordable homes. Her efforts culminated in the construction of The Rose, a 90-unit apartment building in Minneapolis that set a new national standard for healthy materials.

Gina was named to Finance and Commerce’s Top Women in Finance (2012 & 2015), and in 2021 received a Women in Sustainability Leadership Award (WSLA), one of the most prestigious awards honoring leadership in sustainability across the globe, and was named one of the 2023 & 2024 Top Women Leaders in Minnesota by Women We Admire. Gina authored a chapter in the 2023 Regenerative Materials Movement book. She completed the Achieving Excellence program at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and holds a B.S degree in Housing from the University of Minnesota.