BPI Celebrates Home Performance Heroes at ACI

Tamasin Sterner, Founder, President, and Chief Coach of Pure Energy was given the Tony Woods Award for Excellence in Advancing the Home Performance Industry at the opening plenary of the ACI National Conference in San Francisco on March 30, 2011. Tamasin has been advancing home performance through mentoring, teaching, consulting work, and building analysis for almost 30 years and is a regular Home Energy contributer. "I had to prove that I can do everything that men can do—and more", she says, having begun her work in the home performance field when it was a mostly men-only profession. Home Energy celebrates with our friend and the mentor of the hundreds of men and women who are now in the field making homes safer, healtheir to live in, more comfortable, and more energy efficient. One mentoree of Tamasins is someone we all know. Tamasin single-handedly convinced President Obama that "insulation is sexy."

The Award for Excellence is named after Tony Woods, former President of Canam Building Envelope Specialists, Inc. and ZERODRAFT. I will always remember Tony for saying that his best marketing tool in his native Canada is the black fly. The pesky fly gets people to call a home performance contractor. Once they are there, a knowledgeable contractor can get rid of the flies, and make the home more efficient, comfortable, and affordable to live in.

Also at the opening plenary of the ACI National Conference, other home performance heroes were welcomed to the Building Performance Industry Hall of Fame. This year's inductees:

• Steven Cowell, founder of Conservation Services Group in 1984
• Hap Haven, master educator in the home performance industry and the pioneer of the "home as a system" approach to home performance in 1981.
• Courtney Moriarta, Business Development Manager for MASCO/WellHome and editorial advisor for Home Energy

All these honorees have been advancing home performance since before it was called home performance, and before Home Energy was called Home Energy—it was called Energy Auditor and Retrofiter. It's not a stretch to list them among the founders of the home performance industry, who continue to inspire the next generation, and the next...