Rick Fedrizzi, of Westvale, was director of environmental marketing at Carrier Corp. when he saw opportunity and a mission.

With David Gottfried and Michael Italiano, Fedrizzi founded the U.S. Green Building Council in 1993. USGBC, headquartered in Washington, D.C., now works in 150 nations with an operating budget of $90 million year. It has about 270 employees, mostly in the U.S., but also in India, China and Brazil. The council developed the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building standards and created Green Business Certification Inc.

The council changed the way business views the environment. It changed the way building materials are made and the way buildings are constructed, renovated and maintained.

Last year, his book "Greenthink: How Profit Can Save the Planet" was published, and Fedrizzi announced that he will step down as CEO from USGBC at the end of 2016.

Through it all, Fedrizzi has maintained his residence in Westvale with his wife, Cathy, an elementary school teacher.

Were you in leadership roles growing up?

I grew up in Solvay, went to CBA for high school. I was extremely average -- average in school and average in sports.

From my grandparents and my parents (Arigo and Dorothy), I learned a strong work ethic. I had my first job at 14, and it turned into two jobs at 16, and I worked 40 hours a week during college.

At the beginning of my career, I realized the more work I put in, the more I would pull out of a situation and the greater the effect on a project or the team. I started understanding what leadership was about. I started reading more about leadership, and then I got my MBA.

As the world changes, the framework of leadership changes. You have to be a part of that. You have to understand what your skills are. Leadership skills that may have been prevalent in the 1950s, probably wouldn't work in most board rooms today.

The evolution of those skills and how you lead your team and what you know about your team show whether you're considered a good leader.

Tell me about the family-inspired work ethic.

Both my Greek and Italian grandfathers came over, probably six or seven years before they sent for their wives and in one case their children. They had to be a part of growing something that was worthy of their families coming here. They both realized very quickly that they could do that.

Silvio and Leticia Fedrizzi were my Italian grandparents. It was the typical immigrant story.

My Greek grandparents were Steven -- actually, Sterio was his birth name -- and Elizabeth Dine.

My dad died fairly young. There's a passage in my book about the toxicity we live with in this world. The book is essentially my experiences and understanding that if you truly are going to advance an environmental or sustainable agenda, capitalism is probably the single, only way we're ever going to get to where we have to go.

He was a printer and he worked in a printing place in Lyncourt. When I was a kid, every Saturday morning he would take me in to see his jobs. I remember walking in and the smell was so strong you'd get dizzy, kind of sick. I remember saying: Can I play outside?

He worked in that environment for almost 20 years, and died at the age of 54 (in 1980) of the worst grade brain tumors. Here's a guy who was one of the healthiest outdoor guys. He played golf, he hunted -- he did everything. Today, that kind of condensed accumulation of toxins wouldn't be allowed in a workplace. We didn't know then.

Other influences?

I graduated from Le Moyne College (1976) with an accounting degree. Graduation was, I think, May 28th, and June 1st I started at Carrier.

I had a great experience at Carrier. I was an internal auditor, but I kept watching the marketing department, and I thought they were having all the fun.

My dad, even when he was very sick, always told me: Do what you love and everything else will follow.

I walked into the senior vice president of marketing's office (Don Stehle) and said: Could I bother you for a minute?

He's like: Who are you?

I said: I work in accounting, but I want to be a marketer. Can you tell me what I should do?

He said: Are you serious?

I said: Yeah.

It was almost a scene out of a movie.

He gets on the phone and he has a little conversation and he goes: OK. You're going to Miami. You're going to sell air conditioners.

I said: I don't want to be a salesman. I want to be a marketer.

He looked me right in the eye, and he said: The best way to learn marketing is to learn it from the customer end.

Cathy and I had just gotten married in August. In January (1978), we moved to Miami for five years.

That was a turning point.

That was a big turning point.

The single greatest influence I had was Jim Lyons. He was Carrier's president of North American operations.

I had just come back from Miami. Serendipitously, a Japanese air conditioning company was coming in to the United States through Miami.

Lyons said: Didn't we just bring a guy back from Miami? Bring him up here. What does he know?

They brought me up there, and I told him everything I knew. Because I knew the guy who went over to run the Japanese distributor, I actually knew a lot.

Three months later, Jim Lyons, walked into my office. Protocol was the corporate executives stayed up on the second floor. They used to call it Rug Row, because it was the only place in the building that was carpeted.

He came off of Rug Row and came down into the basement where I was and said: That was great information about the Japanese.

He said: Where'd you get your MBA?

I said: I don't have my MBA.

He went: What?

He pointed at me and he said: You need to get your MBA.

I went like: I have every intention. My daughter was just born. I have every intention.

(Soon), I got a letter. It said: You and four other people are the inaugural class of the Syracuse University executive MBA program. For two years, we will give you every other Friday off and you will give us every other Saturday. But at the end of two years, you will have your MBA.

That had to make an impact.

Jim Lyons was a big influence. When you talk about leadership, those are the experiences you have and you keep a piece of them.

What advice would you give a new leader or someone aspiring to a leadership role?

A lot of leaders want to continue to be the smartest person in the room, and I think that's such a mistake. I constantly try to hire people smarter than me, and it's built a powerhouse team at USGBC.

A leader needs to over-communicate and listen to their team.

Advance the discussions in a way that are humble on your part. Show you are not afraid to talk about your failures. Any conversation of a failure should show the success that came from that. What did you learn from that? How did you advance beyond that?

To me it's a sign of poor leadership if someone walks in and says: I'm the new leader. I've got all the answers.

You have to be willing to understand the people that are working the issues every day. What are they saying? What are they not seeing? Are they talking to the customers? What's their perception?

Then, encourage them to be the solution. Again, a good leader isn't the one that comes in the room with the answer. The good leader is the one secure enough to just force that to come from others.

Once your team comes up with the solution, once your team has experience of the joy of knowing what that positive event feels like, they'll do it again and again and again.

Some leaders like to hide behind complexity. It gives them the appearance of being smarter.

A new leader should not be afraid to make things simple. They should not be afraid to listen intently, ask questions. They should not be afraid to hire up and look for the absolute best talent. Ultimately, give people a chance to learn by their mistakes, with no shame, and turn that around into a success in the future.

Why give up your dream job now?

I had some personal benchmarks that I wanted to achieve.

No. 1, I wanted to grow a high-level, world-class staff. I wanted our organization to be perceived as a definitive player in the arena of sustainability. From everything that I read and can assess, we are taken very seriously.

We have done this rare thing of bringing business to the table. We have almost 13,500 member organizations. Probably 40 percent of the Fortune 50 are members of the organization.

I've been able to put $100 million in reserves at USGBC. In so doing, and our board of directors has agreed, I've been able to create our own endowment. No one granted us that money to put in the bank. We have been able to do that.

We've just shifted our board of directors from 26 members down to nine in a dramatic shift.

We've created a sister organization called GBCI - it's called Green Business Certification Inc. It registers, certifies and credentials not only LEED, but other rating systems. One on infrastructure, one on power grid integrity, one on the value of real estate portfolios -- there's seven of them.

We did that at the beginning of the downward spiral when the recession began. I learned that from United Technologies. Harry Gray, back in the day ran a defense business but also did airlines (Pratt & Whitney) and other domestic brands. Then he bought Carrier Corp. Then he bought Otis Corp. A lot of people wondered what he was doing. He believed that in the world that we live in, the economics will always be staggered, so that when we are not at war, the defense business goes down, but at the same time home building goes up, building cities, development infrastructure, those things go up. He was balancing his risk.

With GBCI, we have the ability to do other certifications. Thus balance our risk. If the real estate market goes down, and nobody's building LEED buildings for a while, I don't want USGBC to suffer, because there will be other investment opportunities.

In the future we'll have the capability of certifying, for example, food safety, cruise ships and other kinds of transportation.

Right now, a good example is a program called EDGE. It is a building standard for developing countries that encourages basic energy and water improvements and becomes a pathway to LEED. The World Bank and an organization called IFC developed the standard but don't have the infrastructure to do the certification. GBCI does.

What next?

I've learned about a lot of things that are associated with the green building movement, but they're not necessarily the prime focus, things like affordable housing, energy independence, food security, and human health and wellness.

So part of my interest is possibly looking at things like that in more depth, looking at the opportunity to expand what I've already learned and hopefully continue to make a difference.

Oh, and maybe have a little bit more time back home.

The weekly "CNY Conversation" features Q&A interviews about leadership, success, and innovation. The conversations are condensed and edited. To suggest a leader for a CNY Conversation, contact Stan Linhorst at StanLinhorst@gmail.com.

Last week: Yvonne Annese LoRe talks about how and why a leader needs to communicate clearly. Her advice: If it takes two emails, pick up the phone instead.