About

Companies may have dipped their toe in the water of sustainability and have achieved an ENERGY STAR Label or perhaps even Green Globes or LEED certification. These are great tactical actions and provide advantages. However, Corporate Sustainability Strategies takes sustainability to the next level by developing an over-arching strategy that integrates sustainability into the way organizations do business.

Led by Brenna Walraven, CSS provides expert sustainability strategy development and execution plans that enable clients to improve financial and ESG performance. We help organizations not only manage costs but also drive higher performing operations, increase profitability, and gain a competitive advantage by integrating sustainability and ESG aspects into the overall business. CSS helps firms deliver on the business case with real results.

CSS’ clients represent national multi-sector real estate, with approximately $284 Billion in Assets Under Management (AuM). Clients have achieved 28 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year awards, several GRESB Sector Leaders (number 1 ranking) and many having recurring, year-over-year improvements and success. CSS’ corporate clients benefit from our unique background of 28 years of real estate experience, business case thought leadership, and executive experience in driving a unique four-step process that can be tailored to drive meaningful results.

Brenna S. Walraven

BOMA Fellow, BOMI-HP®, CPM® , RPA®

President & CEO

Corporate Sustainability Strategies

Brenna Walraven is an internationally recognized leader in the commercial real estate industry and sustainability sphere.  She has excelled at leading large, diverse real estate organizations and has served some of the most discriminating institutional investors.

After almost 30 years in commercial real estate leadership, including 17 years with USAA Real Estate, Ms. Walraven founded Corporate Sustainability Strategies (CSS), a firm dedicated to providing best practice solutions for organizations by helping them develop and implement business-case-focused environmental, social, governance, and resilience (ESG+R) strategies for real estate operations, asset management, and investor engagement.

Ms. Walraven’s clients include both publicly and privately held real estate organizations representing approximately $284 billion in Assets under Management (AuM) globally and include assets in most property types and include debt investments.

Ms. Walraven has served in various executive-level roles, including Head of Property Operations and Portfolio Manager, providing strategic leadership for national, multi-sector real estate portfolios.  In these roles, she regularly engaged with investors, joint venture partners, and development partners, and oversaw property management, leasing, national accounts’ procurement, sustainability, risk management, and insurance for assets in every sector (office, industrial, retail, hotel, multifamily, mixed-use, healthcare, storage, and development).

Ms. Walraven served on former California Governor Schwarzenegger’s Real Estate Leadership Council and has testified before the United States Congress on issues of energy efficiency and sustainability.  Ms. Walraven is former chairman and chief elected officer for Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International, the first woman to serve as chair in the association’s 100-plus-year history.  She is a founding leader and developer of BOMA’s Energy Efficiency Program (BEEP^®), which has trained over 36,000 real estate professionals.  She also was part of the development of the BOMI International, Property and Facility Management Education, High-Performance Sustainable Buildings (BOMI-HP^®) designation program, serving as an executive editor and instructor.

As part of her leadership within BOMA International, Ms. Walraven partnered with Clinton Climate Initiative in 2007 to help develop a private sector approach to energy performance contracting (EPC) where retrofits are paid for over time out of savings generated by large building retrofit projects.  She also led the redevelopment and launch of the BOMA Energy Performance Contract (BEPC) model with refined tools, case studies, and implementation partners.  

To date, results include 28 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year Awards and client savings of over $50 million in operating costs.  Also, led by Ms. Walraven’s expertise, several clients have had consistent top-performance recognition with GRESB (formerly known as Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark).  Multiple portfolios have been awarded GRESB’s Green Star (top performance recognition) and have ranked in the top five performers, with multiple clients achieving the #1 ranking as GRESB Sector Leader for leadership in sustainability strategy, management, and execution. 

In addition to serving on several Advisory Boards, being an accomplished author, a sought-after speaker, and an instructor for over 25 years, Ms. Walraven thoroughly enjoys helping organizations and teams pursue excellence and do well by doing good.  She is a BOMA Fellow, and she holds a B.A. in Economics and MBA, with an emphasis in finance and real estate, from University of Southern California.

Brenna participates in a variety of industry-related panel discussions and speaking engagements. She participated in the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) real estate industry working group to develop sustainability disclosure.