Vere Shaba

With 13 years of experience, Vere Shaba is a multi-award winning engineer and sustainability consultant who has worked for multinational engineering consulting firms including Volkswagen, WSP and AECOM before founding Greendesign in 2016 and being appointed as the Head of Africa of the World Green Building Council in 2021.

For green buildings, her career began in 2010 when she was a part of the WSP-LUC-DHK winning team for the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace & Environmental Studies international design competition where the institute was to be carbon-neutral. Since then, she has been passionate about net zero green buildings that do less harm to people and to the climate and environment - understanding that Africa is the most vulnerable continent to climate change with women in Africa being disproportionately impacted.

As an ESG and sustainability consultant, Vere is experienced in green building certifications of office, hospitality, healthcare, retail, education, industrial, museum and precinct projects across the continent. The first Green Star project that she submitted to the Green Building Council South Africa as the Green Star Accredited Professional was awarded a South African Property Owners Association award for Overall Winner and her most notable projects to date is the Green Star precinct certification of 600,000 sqm of Waterfall City in South Africa and EDGE building certification of 600,000 sqm of the Museum of West African Art in Nigeria that is currently being targeted (this culminates to more than 1 million sqm under green building and precinct certification managed by Greendesign).

In 2020, Vere was invited to support the Middle East & Africa Regional Networks of the World Green Building Council (WorldGBC). In 2021, she was then appointed as the Head of Africa Programmes for the World Green Building Council. In this role, she led the regional programmes with the African Union, C40 Cities, International Finance Corporation and UNFCCC High-Level Climate Champions.

For climate diplomacy, she developed a Middle East & North Africa focal point for Egypt and Tunisia and facilitated the membership of Nigeria, Ethiopia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. This increase in regional membership resulted in the WorldGBC Africa Regional Network growing from 9 to 15 GBCs and 300 million to 700 million people represented across the continent in her one year tenure at WorldGBC - before stepping down in 2023 to refocus on green building and precinct certifications and to support Member States of the African Union with the inaugural Africa Climate Summit 2023.