Wenting Li, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, senior sustainable design specialist in HOK’s New York office, is a member of Building Design+Construction’s 40 Under 40 class of 2026.
Each year, BD+C’s editors choose 40 architects, engineers, contractors, real estate developers and allied professionals for the honor. The magazine recognizes them for their career achievements, commitment to the profession, work with industry organizations and service to their communities.
Li, 32, leads sustainability for HOK’s Northeast practice. Her first project at the firm was LaGuardia Airport’s 1.3-million-sq.-ft. Terminal B, which became the world’s first airport terminal to earn LEED v4 Gold certification for design and construction. Li helped complete the terminal’s final certification, issued after construction was completed, which extended the Gold rating to the western concourse and pedestrian bridge. She told BD+C that completing the certification is her proudest professional achievement. Learning the process on a project of that scale changed how she thinks about sustainable design and long-term building performance.
She now leads sustainable design for the $1.7 billion Wadsworth Center Laboratory in Albany, New York, the largest and most diverse state public health laboratory in the country. Her solar, daylighting and facade studies have informed the project from early design through construction.
Li also helps set the standards her field works by. She serves on the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Technical Advisory Group, which is developing LEED v5, and USGBC staff named her an exemplary LEED volunteer this year. An engineering research paper she wrote ranked in the top 10% of most-cited papers of 2020. She teaches Environments in Architecture as an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and previously taught first-year architecture students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In 2025 she spoke at Climate Week NYC about resources for climate entrepreneurs.
Li credits a mentor at HOK with the best career advice she has received: “Run towards trouble.” She told BD+C the lesson pushes her to embrace uncertainty and take on complex problems instead of avoiding them.
Outside work, Li designed her own home and continues to renovate it. She also organizes informal hackathons and enjoys experimenting with emerging technologies.
Read Li’s full profile and meet the rest of the class on BD+C.