Liz McCartney

Liz co-founded SBP in 2006 after spending two weeks volunteering in New Orleans six months after Hurricane Katrina. What she and her then boyfriend, Zack thought would be a one-time, two week trip, led to a passion for direct impact and system change. Today Liz is the Chief Operating Officer, leading SBP’s ongoing long-term rebuilding work in 10 disaster-impacted communities around the country, where she provides oversight for all volunteer management, client services and construction activities.

Liz has also led the expansion of SBP’s innovative Opportunity Housing program which redevelops blighted New Orleans properties into affordable homes for first time low-moderate income homebuyers, and generates revenue which is re-invested into SBP’s owner occupied rebuilding program. Through SBP’s partnership with Toyota, Liz led her team to reduce the average time to rebuild a house from 116 to 61 days. The model used to achieve these results has become SBP’s standard construction model, applied to all of the organization’s work nationwide. Liz speaks on a number of topics including disaster recovery and women’s leadership.

Liz has delivered addresses at her alma mater, Boston College and participated on panels at the Farmers Insurance Open Executive Women’s Day. In 2008 Liz was named the CNN Hero of the Year for her innovative work in helping Katrina survivors return home and in 2016 she was nominated as a CNN SuperHero of the Decade for her continued work in disaster recovery in South Louisiana following devastating floods that summer.

In recognition of her dedication, Liz has twice been named a White House Champion of Change (2011 & 2013) and in 2011 was awarded an Urban Innovation Fellowship at Tulane University to scale and replicate SBP’s model across the country, with support from the university. Prior to founding SBP, Liz taught middle school in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, upon her return from Lesotho where she served with the Peace Corps.