Dr. Elizabeth Hausler

Founder

World-Class Social Innovator. Safe Housing Advocate. Bricklayer.

Elizabeth Hausler, PhD, envisions a world where every home is disaster-resilient. As the founder of non-profit social innovator Build Change, she began making that vision a reality in 2004. In 2024, as the organization celebrated 20 Years of Impact, Elizabeth stepped aside as CEO and the board of directors appointed Juan Caballero as CEO. Elizabeth remains on board as an advisor through 2025.

Elizabeth’s inspirational message – that one woman can change the world, with a lot of help from her friends – has been featured on the BBC, NPR, The New York Times, and the TED stage, among others. She has keynoted business conferences, delivered university commencements, and addressed global convenings including COP26.

A Vision that Resonates

Among Elizabeth’s many accolades are the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability, the Campanile Excellence in Achievement Award and Civil and Environmental Engineering Department Academy of Distinguished Alumni Award from UC Berkeley, and listing on Forbes 50 Over 50: Impact in 2023.

A Simple but Powerful Theory of Change

By empowering vulnerable people – especially women – to build homes they want to live in, Elizabeth believes we will also make them safer. To achieve this, as CEO, she led Build Change to work with global NGOs and governments to shape policy, with leading technology companies to scale engineering solutions through AI and other innovations, and with microfinance institutions and banks to expand access to financing for both homeowners and entrepreneurs.

This work is evidence of the simple but powerful theory of change Elizabeth has laid out: resilient housing requires people, money, and technology. Her transformation of these from barriers to systems change into enablers of it began when she was a Fulbright Fellow in India. There she studied and assisted with housing reconstruction following the 2001 Kachchh, Gujarat earthquake.

A Foundation in Science and Engineering

Elizabeth’s problem-solving leadership style is grounded in her research and training as a scientist and engineer. This includes a B.S. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an M.S. in environmental science from the University of Colorado, an M.S. in civil engineering from UC Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at UC Berkeley. Elizabeth also learned brick, block, and stonemasonry working alongside her father, Don Hausler, a stonemason and builder in northeastern Illinois, where she grew up.

In addition to founding Build Change, Elizabeth has served as a member of the IFC Building Resilience Index Technical Review Panel and on the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council for Risk and Resilience. In October 2024, she will be inducted into the National Academy of Construction.

Image of Elizabeth working in Gujarat, India

A Presence on Stage and in the News

Freethink Interview

COP26 Partnership Panel

Autodesk University Opening Keynote

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