One evening in 2010, Award of Excellence winner Jason F. McLennan and Bullitt Center developer Denis Hayes—the man McLennan credits with masterminding the Living Building Challenge’s most important project—were chatting about life as they walked to dinner. The kindred spirits soon discovered that McLennan’s paternal grandmother, Annie, was the 71-year-old Hayes’ first-grade teacher in Espanola, a small town about 50 miles from McLennan’s hometown of Sudbury, Ontario.
“It was freaky,” says McLennan, who believes the coincidence is a case of the many “invisible helping hands” that have guided him through life, especially on his crusade to create greener environments.