September Blog Post
PARTNER HIGHLIGHT: 2M
Few people in Atlanta’s green building community have accomplished as much as Belinda Morrow, President at 2M Design Consultants in Fulton County, Georgia. “Sustainability was the way I was raised. This has been a natural fit for me,” Morrow said of her 37-plus year career. In 2001, she was one of the first 100 LEED accredited professionals. Since then she has become a leading voice in sustainability by working with the Fulton County government on a massive library project and delivering GPRO to the local workforce.
Morrow took a leading role in the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library Capital Improvement Program plan to retrofit 24 existing libraries and construct eight new libraries, all to a minimum of LEED Silver Certification. 2M wrote the LEED implementation plan and oversaw the teams responsible. Morrow took the project a step further by spearheading the first-ever Fulton County solar installation project on the Cleveland Ave Library. Attendees at the Greenbuild 2019 Conference can see how 2M transformed these libraries on a tour of the LEED Gold Auburn Ave Research Library on African American Culture and History on November 18th.
In addition to design projects, 2M offers green job training and is a GPRO Delivery Partner. This summer, a cohort from the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) graduated from Fundamentals of Building Green at 2M. IMAN, an organization based out of Chicago and Atlanta, is a rigorous re-entry program that provides young men with job and life skills. A select group from over 400 applicants was picked for the Green Re-Entry Program and received GPRO training. “They came in embracing sustainability and wanting to implement that in the field,” said Morrow. “And they even wanted to teach the older workers on the job site. They would tell the other workers that this is the green way.”
All 10 IMAN students who obtained a GPRO Certificate have successfully found full-time jobs and are putting their GPRO knowledge to work. “It’s not just the green job training; the placement piece is also important,” said Leonard Morrow, Vice President of 2M. “It’s a practical matter. We can put what they learned to the test and move forward with being productive in our communities.”
Thank you to Belinda and Leonard Morrow from 2M, and congratulations to Atlanta’s newest GPRO Certificate Holders. The IMAN students are not only skilled in the building trades—they are talented musically as well! Check out their original music video.