Sydney Mainster

Sydney Mainster serves as the Director of Sustainability for The Durst Organization – a 100-year-old family-run Real Estate company based in New York City. She brings over 12 years of professional and academic Architecture, Design and Construction experience to her role. Her current passion is defining strategies to transform the building product industry and resultant material waste streams.

Prior to joining the Durst Organization in early 2014, she served as Adjunct Faculty and Director of the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture Materials Resource Center. She moved to Austin, TX after earning a Master of Architecture degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2010, and after spending the summer teaching design as an Architecture Studio Instructor for the GSD’s Career Discovery program. Between her undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley (BA in Architecture; Minor in Structural Engineering) and graduate school, as well as post-GSD, she worked at a variety of construction industry-related jobs in Los Angeles, Berkeley, Boston, New York City, London, and Austin. She has professional experience working in Architecture, Structural Engineering, Construction, Academia, and as a Green Building Consultant to Texas and New York developers.