Adrienne Farrar Houël

Adrienne Farrar Houël is founder, President and CEO of Greater Bridgeport Community Enterprises, Inc. a nonprofit community development corporation that develops nonprofit sustainability enterprises to create jobs for disadvantaged area residents; researches trends in green business development; has trained and placed low and moderate- income residents in green jobs; and advocates for more green economy jobs in the Bridgeport area and throughout the State of Connecticut.

Ms. Farrar Houël has extensive international executive experience in France, Russia and Ireland in real estate development, construction and marketing. In 2002, she returned to the U.S. and initiated a career in community economic development. In her most recent capacities, she has designed, funded and operated workforce development training programs; worked on curriculum design and delivery of business development courses for Resident Owned Businesses for CT housing authorities; conducted studies concerning affordable housing as well as funded and developed affordable housing projects; and created GBCE with three nonprofit, sustainability enterprises under its umbrella.

GBCE uses its expertise to create economic opportunity by developing “triple bottom line” businesses featuring: environmental sustainability; social good by training and hiring disadvantaged, low-income unemployed residents enabling them to become economically self-sufficient; and economic and community development for distressed urban neighborhoods. In June 2012, GBCE opened Park City Green, a mattress deconstruction/materials recycling division. Park City Green employs 18 persons largely from Bridgeport’s Re-Entry community in its growing enterprise, recycling more than 325,000 units since the implementation of the state’s mattress recycling law in mid-2015.

Ms. Farrar Houël contributed to the City of Bridgeport’s BGreen 2020 Initiative from its inception in 2008. She is immediate past Chair of the City of Bridgeport’s Energy Improvement District and, in 2015, served as Chair to the Community Advisory Committee negotiating a community benefits agreement with the owner of the Bridgeport Harbor Coal plant which will result in the closure of the last coal plan in CT in 2020.

Ms. Farrar Houël has been active in Preservation since 2003 to 2018 as a trustee and officer of the CT Trust for Historic Preservation. Also, in the interest of preserving and developing an important African-American historic site in Bridgeport, she joined the founding board of the Mary and Eliza Freeman Foundation for History and Community and still serves to this day. In 2012, GBCE’s Green Team conducted deconstruction classes in the initial phases of preserving the houses’ structures for future re-development.

For the State of Connecticut, Ms. Farrar Houël was Co-Chair of the 2013 Governor’s Task Force on Modernizing Recycling in Connecticut and served on the Green Jobs Committee, a joint committee of CT’s Department of Labor and Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. More recently in 2016-2019, she served on the state’s Energy Efficiency Board named by Commissioner Dykes of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and chaired the Residential Sub-Committee of the Board. In 2020 she began service on the Governor’s Climate Change Committee contributing to the policy recommendations for Financing and Funding Climate Adaptation and Resilience through the lens of Environmental Justice. The CT Women’s Hall of Fame honored Ms. Farrar Houël for her leadership in community and economic development in 2019. Most recently, in March 2021, Governor Ned Lamont named Ms. Farrar Houël to the board of directors of the Connecticut Green Bank. She was sworn in on March 26.

Ms. Farrar Houël earned her MBA at Harvard Business School and resides in Bridgeport, Connecticut with her husband, Christian.