See photos from a recent straw building workshop Max helped with near Monterey, CA

Download the flyer for an upcoming straw building workshop in Monterey, CA

Max Perelman is a charter member of the Rotary club of Monterey International and the research director and co-producer of the Green Dragon Media Project, which recently completed a 9-week research and filming expedition to 9 cities along China's east coast. Interviewees included Chinese government officials as well as the leaders of major developers, professional services firms and product manufacturers.

Max lives in Monterey, California with his wife and daughter where he leads a number of environmental initiatives for thelocal government as well as consults on green building projects in the region.

For the past decade, Max has worked as a business strategy consultant and Internet commerce marketing manager where he engaged in strategy development, process analysis, and requirements gathering. He has over five years of management-level experience leading and project managing multicultural teams of up to 25 members and project budgets of over $5 million. After launching his career in San Francisco, Max worked in Asia for eight years, managing projects in Hong Kong, Beijing, Bangkok, and Tokyo. He is fluent in Japanese and Chinese.

Max is also a graduate student at the Monterey Institute of International Studies where he is earning his MBA as well as an MA in International Environmental Policy. Max's focus of study is sustainable construction within the United States and China. He plans to facilitate the exchange of green building best practices between these two countries.

Contact Max by calling 831-917-7641 or send an email.

Linda Zhu (Zhu Qing Yan) is the Managing Director of ADRA China, headquartered in Beijing, China. One of her main projects is the Strawbale Ecological Housing Program. Since introducing Strawbale construction in northern China in 1998, the program has worked with local communities training local construction teams, and building over 600 energyefficient, earthquake-resistant, and culturally appropriate buildings using straw and other local building materials.

Linda received the 2005 World Habitat Award from the Building and Social Housing Foundation of Great Britain for providing practical and innovative solutions to current housing needs and problems.

Xing Ce is a government official and has been the director for the local project management office (PMO) in Heilongjiang province’s Tangyuan county since 2000. He has proven abilities in project management and he knows how to work with international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like ADRA. Mr. Ce has attended numerous management and technical trainings provided by ADRA, after managing many of ADRA’s previous projects, he has become a successful promoter for local strawbale construction.

Mr. Ce currently works for the Tangyuan county Tourist Bureau and he is dedicating part of his time to serve as ADRA’s field staff for this project. Mr. Ce deeply under stands the situation on the ground since he is originally from Heilongjiang province and is currently based there. Tangyuan has easy transportation access to other parts of Heilongjiang province, enabling him to travel to other sites to organize trainings and inspect construction quality.