Drew Shula

Activist, Architect, Business leader, Change agent, Connector, Consultant, Entrepreneur, Environmentalist, Event planner, Idea generator, Investor, Parent, Potential employer, Project manager, Sales specialist, Social entrepreneur, Startup, World traveler

Drew is a social entrepreneur and environmentalist. He is Founder & CEO of Verdical Group, a nationally leading sustainability consulting firm specializing in green building certifications, engineering services, ESG, net zero strategy, and events since 2012. Verdical Group is a high-scoring certified B Corporation and 1% for the Planet member company working on some of the highest profile green building projects in the world with visionary institutions like NASA, Google, Johnson & Johnson, LAX, Meta, and Apple. Under his leadership, Verdical Group was named to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies in 2025, a 1% for the Planet Summit Award nominee in 2024, won a Real Leaders Impact Award in 2023, and was a Finalist for Small Business of the Year from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington DC in 2022. He is also founder of the world’s largest annual net zero event — the Net Zero Conference and Trailblazer Awards. Shula was just the sixth person ever to be honored as both a LEED Fellow and Living Future Hero. He has also been nominated for EY Entrepreneur of the Year, was named to Building Design + Construction Magazine’s 40 Under 40 list, and is a two-time nominated participant in the TED Countdown global climate summit, attending in Detroit in 2023 and Nairobi, Kenya in 2025. He frequently speaks about the building industry’s impact on the climate crisis and net zero building design. He has been featured as a speaker at high-profile events such as the Greenbuild International Conference, Metropolis Magazine DesignTV, Living Future unConference, the Coachella Music Festival speaker series, Cornell University, and the AIA 1.5 Degrees Celsius Symposium on Climate Change. Drew is a past or current member of several Advisory Boards, including USGBC California, Woodbury University School of Architecture, the Living Future LA Collaborative (where he was a member of the Founding Steering Committee), and Environmental Charter High School. Drew has been featured or published in ABC News, USA Today, S&P Global, The Washington Post, Forbes, Architectural Record Magazine, Spectrum News 1, Metropolis Magazine, and China Global Television Network (CGTN). He holds a 5-year professional degree in Architecture from the University of Notre Dame.

Climate start-ups, B Corporations, ESG, solving the climate crisis, sustainability, building a net zero future

I'm in business to help solve the climate crisis. About 42% of global carbon emissions come from buildings - a largely invisible problem. Building a net zero future requires rapidly decarbonizing the built environment. We need to get methane gas (commonly known as natural gas) out of buildings as quickly as possible. In the future we'll grow our buildings with organic materials rather than build them the way we do today.

Business Management (B Corporations), ESG, green building, net zero, social entrepreneurship, sustainability, sustainable event production, zero carbon

I'm honored to have been invited by TED to attend the invite-only TED Countdown Summit 2023 in Detroit, the "big TED" main conference in Vancouver in 2025, as well as the invite-only TED Countdown Summit 2025 in Nairobi, Kenya.

Discussing your favorite rappers.