“He heard me on Seattle’s local NPR affiliate. He saw our ad, and he was determined to work for Green Canopy, learn our business, prove himself and show what he is capable of. He got the job."
Contributed by Aaron Fairchild, CEO of Green Canopy, Inc.
Ryan Nieto came into the office looking like a modern “Urban Jesus”. The moniker stuck. Thick long brown hair, beard, tats… full on Portlandia meets Seattle. He was working as a mechanical HVAC installer, installing air-conditioning systems at QFC grocery stores. He wanted to work for us as a laborer.
He said he saw the ad on our website. It wasn’t adding up for me. He was making good money as a mechanical installer and wanted to take a cut in pay and responsibility to work for Green Canopy. “Who was this guy?” I was thinking.
As it turns out Ryan is a veteran of the Marine Corps in Iraq. He is an avid bouldered/climber and outdoor enthusiast. He has the millennial mindset that the Green Canopy culture warmly embraces. And most importantly he leads with his heart and his mind. Which is another way of saying he follows his heart as his mind works the calculations. Love that. He came in bold into the office, eyes on fire and twitching, a vestige of hard times spent in a war zone. He heard me on Seattle’s local NPR affiliate. He saw our ad, and he was determined to work for Green Canopy, learn our business, prove himself and show what he is capable of. He got the job.
Green Canopy is the only for-profit homebuilder (that we are aware of) in all of America that was intentionally and deliberately started to combat and lessen the negative impacts of climate change and resource scarcity via in-city homebuilding.
We are run by a group of commited contractors, bankers, designers and most importantly, business people who are breaking the typical homebuilder mold and working hard to build an inspirational brand that helps to leave the world better off. We are funded by a similar minded base of over 40 shareholders and counting… We are lucky to have shareholders that are dedicated to investing their money where their values are for the sake of future generations. We are propelled by the Real Estate Agent community that understands their roll in residential real estate can be used to create transformational change for the better by promoting Green Canopy’s mission and vision of the future.
“We are banking on the success of Portland to fuel expansion outside the Pacific Northwest region and into other markets across the country."With Green Canopy all started up and on solid footing in Seattle, it is time to take the most important step in our company’s short existence: expand and prove that our model can organically grow like a bamboo shoot into new markets. We are so excited to take this critical next step and expand to Portland! Portland is more important to the future success of Green Canopy than anything we are currently working on. We are banking on the success of Portland to fuel expansion outside the Pacific Northwest region and into other markets across the country.
And we are lucky.
As a city, Portland shares what is at the heart of Green Canopy. Green Canopy, like Portland, is brimming with purpose-seeking, millennial minds. As the show Portlandia famously put it, “Portland is the place where young people go to retire.” …Retire from the top down, do-as-your-told, speak-when-spoken-to, non-purposeful J. O. B. economy, to engage in the purpose driven economy where merit prevails over tenure, mentoring over micro-managing, and critical consumption over wanton consumption. Thank God that a city so dedicated to getting the new economy right, with local brands long dedicated to local, conscious, and sustainable living such as Powels Books, Ecotrust, Clean Energy Works, and so many more, represents the future success for Green Canopy.
Over the course of the last three years, Ryan has taken 10 old, run-down, drafty homes and miraculously transformed these into resource efficient, certified green, and the highest in quality rebuilt homes to inspire generations of future residents. Working out of the Ecotrust building in the Pearl, Ryan will be responsible for applying his hard earned homebuilding magic to manage the inspirational transformation of old homes to new, and building brand new homes designed to inspire and create awareness of the benefits of resource efficiency.
Ryan is Green Canopy is Ryan. We share the same mission, vision and values and are hopeful that these will resonate in Portland. So nearly three years on, Urban Jesus, is heading to the City of Bridges. Don’t expect him to walk across the Columbia and Willamette Rivers to get there, or go into business transforming water to wine… his assignment is much more terrestrial and perhaps mundane in nature. We don’t have a divine goal of saving humanity, but we are humbly trying to make the world a little better place through our work. Here we come…