PHN’s instructors teach our Passive House courses. Each holds Passive House Institute credentials and works in Passive House practice, as an architect, consultant, or certifier.
The courses: Certified Passive House Designer/Consultant, Certified Passive House Tradesperson, and all PHN training.
PHN’s staff: meet them.
Instructor
Gaby Brainard
Gaby is a licensed architect, Certified Passive House Designer/Consultant, building envelope specialist, and educator. Her work includes technical consulting, academic research, and teaching architecture students and professionals. In her consulting practice, she helps clients design and build efficient, durable, and constructable building envelopes using Passive House principles. Her research on envelope retrofits has been supported by NYSERDA and the AIA Upjohn Research Initiative. She teaches architecture and building science at Pratt Institute and Columbia GSAPP, and previously taught at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Gaby joined the Passive House community after a decade working as a facade specialist on high-profile commercial and multifamily residential projects in New York City, as a senior technical architect at SHoP Architects and a facade consultant at Heintges. She has a Master of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture.
Instructor
John Mitchell
John Mitchell graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Colorado College in 1996 and a Master of Architecture from Parsons the New School in NYC in 2009. In the interim, John worked as a carpenter, first on residential renovations and later the design and construction of custom homes, and as a project manager and digital fabrication specialist for a theatrical design and production company. The combination of design and craft embodied in Passive House resonated with John when he was first exposed to Passive House as a construction manager for Parsons the New School/Stevens Institute of Technology’s 2011 Solar Decathlon entry. John soon became a Certified Passive House Designer and in 2015 began training others in Passive House principles. John is a partner in BLDGTYP, a high-performance building consultancy located in Brooklyn, NY.
Instructor
Matthew Bowers
Matthew Bowers spent six years in the Navy as a nuclear engineer and became interested in thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. Once his tour was over, he attended RIT’s Mechanical Engineering Technology Program, where he wanted to become an HVAC designer. While at RIT he learned of “homes so efficient they don’t need furnaces.” He then focused his career path on Passive House, and graduated with the highest honors in 2010. Since 2013 Matt has worked as a Certified Passive House Consultant and Tradesperson and HERS Rater. In 2017 he started his own company, Rochester Passive House Consulting, specializing in high-performance homes. He has been featured in the Journal of Light Construction’s Energy Column on topics including blower door testing for extremely tight homes, infrared scanning, retrofitting airtightness, and trouble spots for airtightness in new homes. He was the designer of Rochester’s first certified Passive House, his own home. Matt started certifying Passive Houses in 2019 and provides training for PHPP and FLIXO. He is also a certified trainer for the Certified Passive House Designer/Consultant (CPHD/C) and Certified Passive House Tradesperson (CPHT) courses.
Instructor
Steve Mann
Steve Mann, principal of Home Energy Services, is a California HERS Rater and Certified Energy Analyst (CEA), a LEED AP+ Homes and Green Rater, and a certified Passive House Designer, Tradesperson, Trainer, and building Certifier with the Passive House Institute. His two most recent design/build residential projects are Net Zero Energy (NZE), and are both LEED Platinum and Passive House certified.
Checked November 2026.
