In 2019, Our Found Future's founder, Jenn, asked the question that started it all: what is the cumulative embodied carbon impact of multiple tenant improvements over a building's lifespan? To find out, she co-led a study that revealed the cumulative embodied carbon of interior renovations rivaled the building's structure and envelope combined. At the time, interior materials and finishes were considered just a fraction of a building's embodied carbon, under the radar for an industry focused on larger components like structure and envelope. The finding was presented at Greenbuild and later featured in Metropolis Magazine, in which she joked that she was researching herself out of a job. The irony is that this would later turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Knowing is one thing. Doing something about it is the next step, and the next project became the testing ground. As lead designer on Hines's new Seattle Headquarters, Jenn coordinated a cross-disciplinary team through an unconventional design process, with reuse and salvage as the primary carbon reduction strategy. The renovation cut the project's embodied carbon by an estimated 65 percent.

Scaling up was harder. Many circularity strategies she tried to implement ran into barriers like lack of time, competing priorities, lack of buy-in, and perceived cost and schedule risk. Many required chasing the barrier beyond a project's boundaries. How to activate circularity in the built environment occupied her mind, until one day, a kombucha bottle offered up some wise, unsolicited advice: an idea you can't stop thinking about is probably the one to pursue. With that, Jenn founded Our Found Future, to do just that.

Jenn has since helped facilitate a Regional Circularity Ecosystem Workshop, serves as Co-Chair of the PNW Carbon Leadership Forum's Reuse Working Group, as well as serving on the executive advisory council for the new Center for Circularity in Interior Design. Jenn is currently piloting some early circularity investigations, and always excited to take on a new one.