The Grand Challengers Podcast Episode #71

Resilience is the new luxury, for both built and human infrastructure

Guest: Jennifer Koster

September 29th, 2026

Overview

Jennifer Koster is a Netherlands-based entrepreneur, systems thinker and author whose career has moved through three industries: technology and media, high-end residential construction in Los Angeles, and regenerative development. She leads WerkWell, a company working between Europe and the United States on construction management, building performance and innovation, and she is the founder of LivWell, which is developing regenerative communities. Her first book, The Truth About Baggage, is forthcoming.

The conversation with host Peter Marcus Bach is organised around what Jennifer calls both sides of infrastructure. On the built side, she describes how a construction defect claim and the waste generated by luxury remodels pushed her towards a different way of working. First came an independent third party that manages the money and the flow of a project. Then came a building performance layer that weighs capital and operating costs together. Moving to the Netherlands in 2020 exposed her to Dutch electrification, heat pumps, crushed and recast low-carbon concrete and a more systemic approach to design. She also explains alternative financing routes such as power purchase agreements and aquifer recharge credits, and why resilience rather than aesthetics is becoming the measure of a valuable building since the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, which destroyed the homes of two dozen of her friends and former clients.

On the human side, Jennifer argues that people are systems too, and that schools and workplaces mostly train us to fit standard boxes rather than to understand ourselves. LivWell applies blue zone principles (diet, movement, community and purpose) to fence-free communities with closed-loop energy, water and food systems, starting from degraded land that can be restored. Her book traces a route from recognising the ancestral, childhood and genetic baggage we inherit to building the self-awareness needed to live differently. The episode closes with The Key Questions, covering innovation, time-blocking and her advice to young professionals.

Episode Teaser

Teaser for The Grand Challengers Episode 71 – Jennifer Koster on why Resilience is the new Luxury, her journey in the built environment, but also not forgetting about human infrastructure.

Biography

“…Fundamentally, we’re all looking for the same thing: love, belonging, to be seen, to be understood….”

Jennifer Koster is an entrepreneur, strategic adviser and systems thinker working across infrastructure, real estate, regenerative development and international business. Raised in Calgary as a first-generation Canadian with Dutch roots, she studied international business at Carleton University in Ottawa, including a semester in Mexico, before joining a technology startup as its sixth employee and helping it raise more than $35 million. After the dot-com crash she rebuilt her career in construction, first in Calgary and then in Los Angeles, where she became a licensed general contractor delivering high-end residential projects. In 2020 she moved to the Netherlands, where she is co-founder and CEO of WerkWell. The company began as an independent construction management firm and now also offers building performance consulting, an innovations group that sources market-proven European building technologies, and a consulting arm that helps European companies enter the US market. Through WerkWell she has co-organised the (re)Building with Resilience symposium, first held in 2025 after the Los Angeles wildfires, and the Global Resilience & Innovation Summit.

What connects these chapters is a habit of zooming out. Jennifer describes herself as a systems-based thinker who sees how a change in one place ripples through another, and over time she has turned that lens on people as well as buildings. Through LivWell she is raising a fund to acquire and restore land and existing properties, creating communities that combine closed-loop energy and water infrastructure, regenerative agriculture and the social connection found in the world’s blue zones. Her forthcoming book, The Truth About Baggage, examines how ancestral, childhood and lived experiences shape the way we lead and decide, and how awareness can become agency. She speaks internationally on leadership, resilience and what she calls human infrastructure, with past appearances including Urban Future and Decarb NY.

Quick Summary & Highlights

  • Circularity is the thing the built environment still gets most wrong: Moving a light fixture from one building to another is reuse, not circularity. Jennifer argues for deconstruction at the scale of entire buildings, where every component becomes new material and landfill eventually has nothing left to receive.
  • After a disaster, rebuilding fast can mean rebuilding the same risks: Following the January 2025 Los Angeles fires, Jennifer helped convene public, private and community leaders to slow the rush and ask harder questions about debris, toxicity, infrastructure and capital. Blank slates are rare, and she wants them used well.
  • Proven European building innovation often stalls at a capital ceiling: EU policy has produced a wealth of efficient, market-proven building technology, but scale-up capital in Europe is thin compared with the US. WerkWell matches these solutions to American projects and helps the companies land without repeating familiar mistakes.
  • We all carry baggage, and acknowledging it comes before changing anything: Her forthcoming book starts with Acknowledge, naming the ancestral, childhood and genetic layers that shape us. Manifest follows, with free everyday tools like breathwork, journaling and walks in nature, before a final part on how we evolve together.

Resources Related to the Episode

Key research and publications

Tools, methods and context

Resilience and disaster recovery

Cultural, fun and travel references

Mentioned on the show

Episode Chapters

(Chapters are embedded in the episode for quick access, click this to expand and view all chapters and time stamps)
  • 0:00 Intro
  • 1:59 Guest Intro & the predictable unpredictability of life’s journey
  • 5:36 How would Jennifer describe herself?
  • 13:46 Jennifer’s journey into construction
  • 23:37 Decarbonization in construction
  • 26:36 WerkWell – A new path in construction and the pivot
  • 42:44 Resilience, a new definition of luxury
  • 54:03 Human Infrastructure
  • 1:09:59 The “Truth about Baggage”
  • 1:22:28 Jennifer’s Future Plans
  • 1:23:55 What does the built environment miss?
  • 1:25:41 Q&A Start
  • 1:26:03 What does innovation mean to you?
  • 1:27:38 Key moment, book, event, person
  • 1:33:55 Time Management
  • 1:36:44 Favourite childhood memory
  • 1:37:30 Advice for young professioanls
  • 1:37:56 What would you most like to be remembered for?
  • 1:38:11 Where can people find you?
  • 1:39:09 Final Message
  • 1:40:15 Outro

Connect with Jennifer Koster

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