Ellis Herman
I’m a product manager for Autodesk Forma and our embodied and total carbon analyses, and I’m a hybrid employee based in Boston, Massachusetts. We’re working on developing capabilities for Forma that allow our users to understand the carbon impact of their designs at the earliest stages – when they’re making the fundamental decisions that have the most impact.
Our focus is on bringing embodied and total carbon analysis into Forma. For context, embodied carbon is the carbon emitted in producing, transporting, and constructing the materials used to build a building, whereas operational carbon is the carbon emitted in running the building (lighting, heating, cooling, etc.). Because up to 80 percent of a building’s embodied carbon comes from its structure and façade, the decisions made in the earliest stages of design are crucial; a building’s form and primary materials are the most important decisions designers make and are difficult to change as the project progresses, but embodied carbon tools for early-stage design are uncommon – especially ones that target non-carbon-expert users.
I also run the sustainability guild within the Forma team and am a member of our diversity and belonging group. In the sustainability guild, we organize talks related to sustainability on a variety of topics and scopes; we’ve had industry veterans talk to us about the general problems and solutions being worked on in architecture, engineering, and construction, as well as members of Autodesk Research teams explain the projects they’re working on (for example, using a special kind of mushroom to create carbon negative building materials!).
In the diversity and belonging group, we address ways to increase our hiring of underrepresented people, as well as understanding how to make sure their voices are heard within our organization – if you want to build better cities, you need to do it with all the people who live in them!
My journey to Autodesk
I graduated with my master’s degree in mechanical engineering and found a Spacemaker (now known as Forma) job posting on LinkedIn. It appealed to me because it was advertised as a way to work across different areas with a multidisciplinary team, and I was excited to join a company that was still “startup-y” enough that I could wear a few different hats. I also saw Spacemaker as a great way to improve sustainability in a historically unsustainable industry.
One of the main selling points of Forma is that it helps users make informed changes at the beginning of the design process when they can have the most impact for the least cost; this idea applies to sustainability concepts like thermal comfort and operational and embodied energy, too. I wanted to be part of making early-stage evaluations like this standard in the construction industry. I was impressed with the fact that – even though it didn’t bill itself as such at the time – Forma already was a sustainability product! We often focus entirely on more “traditional” green areas like solar power and energy efficiency and forget that improving living conditions is now a crucial part of sustainability.
When Spacemaker was acquired by Autodesk, I saw Autodesk and our transition into Forma as a way to level up our impact. It’s great to make tools that can help designers lower their carbon footprint, but in the end, you need to get lots of people to use them!
We will soon be releasing embodied carbon into the product, which is a big milestone as it’s been something I’ve been working on for years. Joining Autodesk has enabled me and my team to get to this next level – having easy access to many subject-matter experts has helped us create an analysis that is both accessible to non-experts and scientifically accurate.
Moving on up
Since joining the company, I’ve moved from being a machine learning engineer to working in product management. While I want to continue to be involved in technical development, I’m really excited by the prospect of having my hands in a lot of different buckets – design, tech, marketing, user research, etc. I’ve been really encouraged both by the support I received in wanting to change roles and the advice and guidance I’ve found since switching.
My favorite thing about working at Autodesk is absolutely the people I work with! I’ve become very close with the people on my small team over the last couple of years, and the people at Forma are incredibly kind and curious. Also, I’m passionate about making structural changes to fight climate change, so it’s extremely motivating to feel like I’m spending a lot of my time at work helping to change an industry with a lot of low-hanging fruit.
It’s been exciting to learn from all the subject-matter experts at Autodesk, and I’ve been very happy with the autonomy and work-life balance the company has. I think the Forma team does an incredible job of balancing motivation and the understanding that your job is one part of your life, and this balance makes for a very healthy culture.
Want to be part of a company that is working to make a better, more sustainable world? Join us at Autodesk!