Age: 39
Job title: Owner, EcoAmmo Sustainable Consulting Inc.
Why she’s a 2019 Top 40 Under 40: She educates businesses and policy makers about greener possibilities, one building at a time.
After graduating from NAIT’s Interior Design Technology program in 2001, Stephani Carter began her career like many classmates: Working in architectural firms designing commercial office layouts and beautiful interiors.
But, by 2006, Carter realized she was more passionate about the contents and health implications of the paint she selected than the colour.
Ethically conflicted, she stepped away from interior design, and even studied monkeys in Sri Lanka for a few months with the Smithsonian Institute before returning to her advocacy work with the Alberta Chapter of the Canada Green Building Council that she co-founded in 2003.
“I wanted 100 per cent of my time spent in sustainability — all my time put towards making the world better,” she says.
Yet 13 years ago, no other firm offered that job description, so Carter started her own business. The name of her company, EcoAmmo, evolved from product and material discussions she held with manufacturing colleagues about how their “ammunition was ecological knowledge,” and the phrasing stuck.
EcoAmmo provides green building certifications (such as LEED, Net Zero Energy, etc.) and also consults local and international, construction-related companies about LEAN practices (using fewer resources in more efficient ways) as well as Integrated Project Delivery. That’s an innovative, collaborative contractual model enabling involved trades, designers and engineers to provide input throughout all stages of construction. Carter stresses that it’s a team effort at her company.
Each of the nine team members continually researches new products, practices and trends, earning EcoAmmo awards, repeat customers and a waitlist of organizations wanting them to speak at sustainability, educational and environmental events.
“It’s about meeting people where they are, speaking their language about budgets and costs, and ensuring that sustainability can occur, within that framework,” says Carter. “We hope to do more.”
This article appears in the November 2019 issue of Avenue Edmonton
