Elizabeth Hausler

Biography

World-class social entrepreneur. Safe housing advocate. Bricklayer. Dr. Elizabeth Hausler is the Founder and CEO of Build Change and a global expert on resilient housing, post-disaster reconstruction, and systems change. Elizabeth’s strategic direction and leadership have grown Build Change from a few employees in 2004 to a global team spread across five continents. She has profoundly influenced global development policy by making resilience a major consideration for reconstruction efforts. Elizabeth’s extensive experience in post-disaster communities, including a Fulbright Scholarship in India, led her to found Build Change to ensure reconstruction efforts would be safe and sustainable. She is the recipient of many honors, and in 2011, was named the US Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the Schwab Foundation. Together with Build Change, she was awarded the 2017 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. In 2018, she received the University of California, Berkeley’s Campanile Excellence in Achievement Award. Since 2014 she has been a member of the UC-Berkeley Civil and Environmental Engineering Department’s Academy of Distinguished Alumni. Elizabeth is also an Ashoka Fellow, a Draper Richards Kaplan Fellow, and an Echoing Green Fellow. She holds a Ph.D. from UC-Berkeley in Civil Engineering, as well as an M.S. from the University of Colorado and a B.S. from the University of Illinois. Dr. Hausler has headlined top conferences, lectured at eminent universities, and been featured in media outlets including The New York Times, BBC News, Forbes, Elle Magazine, ABC News, and Bloomberg Businessweek.