Jeff Link

Journalist

Chicago, Illinois

Award-winning journalist focused on design, technology, and the environment.

Jeff Link

Journalist

Chicago, Illinois

Award-winning journalist focused on design, technology, and the environment.

Growing Global Citizens
After a three-year struggle to open its doors, the small but revolutionary Academy for Global Citizenship is teaching its students mindfulness, yoga, and environmental sustainability. Recently, the school unveiled its plans for revolution number two, a living campus that will raise the bar for public schools across the globe.
Prairie Plants Thrive in Chicago Botanic Garden's Green Roof Trial
The trial, the largest of its kind in USDA Zone 5, has revealed not only which plants grow best on green roofs but how they may provide refuge for pollinating birds and bees.
Featured
The Smartest Home in San Jose
On a shady, tree-lined street in Willow Glen—a small, progressive community within San Jose, California—sits a home that looks fairly innocuous from the outside. Stone pavers lead to the front porch of the two-story, 3,200-square-foot new build that rests on a solid bass rock foundation and is dressed with cut veneer stone and a sage green façade. It has attractive architectural features, such as a gable roof, bamboo flooring, and timber front porch columns made of century-old Douglas fir salvaged from San Jose’s recently deconstructed Del Monte cannery, but it may not necessarily stop passersby. However, the house was recently purchased for $1.8 million, which is about 10 percent more than area homes of similar size and style.
Featured
NYC Department of Education PS 62
Staten Island’s newest elementary will be NYC’s first net-zero-energy school.
A Tower for Teamwork
If there’s a single word that captures the vision Liberty Mutual Insurance has of itself and its mission to customers, that word is responsibility. Recently, the company sought to determine how best to translate its message of responsibility into the design of its expanded headquarters at 157 Berkeley Street in Boston.
A Hurricane-Proof Shoreline for NYC
How to design low-impact beach structures for a coastline ravaged by Superstorm Sandy. In six months.
Unlocking UL
Founded in 1894 by William Henry Merrill, UL (formerly known as Underwriters Laboratories) has a long history of promoting product safety. Beginning with laboratory testing of fire and shock hazards at the time of the public adoption of electricity, the company’s focus has long been to promote safe living and working environments.
Seeing Is Believing: How Preconstruction and Lean Data Are Transforming JE Dunn Construction
The concept of the “social license to operate” was first proposed in the late 1990s by Jim Cooney as an essential requirement for the survival of the mining industry. Today there is a resurgence of localism, and the concept is increasingly embraced by the building industry, with the recognition that companies cannot operate sustainably without support from everyone involved in the creation of a “place.”.
Featured
Things My Father Taught Me: Jeff Link
Jeff Link is a listener. When we first met, I thought he found our conversations dull. I came to find out, as he’d recount elements of past conversations I’d barely remembered that he was intently listening, taking note of every word, every gesture. Jeff’s a kind man, and he’s become a great friend.
The Nitty-Gritty of Green Roofs
When the City of Toronto passed a bylaw in May 2009 requiring all new buildings with a gross floor area larger than 2,000 square meters to be built with a green roof, Liat Margolis saw her opportunity. The following year she launched the Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory, or GRIT Lab, a windswept research perch on the rooftop of the University of Toronto’s John H.
The Next Generation of Plant Scientists
Plant Biology and Conservation Program Celebrates its Ten-Year Anniversary and Graduates its First Two Ph.D.s
Keep Growing
Featured
Plants of Concern: A Dedicated, Diverse Group Monitors Rare and Endangered Plants
Colaunched by the Chicago Botanic Garden and Audubon-Chicago Region in 2001, and supported by Chicago Wilderness funding, the Plants of Concern program brings together a diverse constituency of trained volunteers, public and private land managers, and scientists to monitor rare plant species. Eileen Sutter, a retired social security administrator, is one of those citizen scientists.
An Atypical Building in a Typical Office Park
E.J. Meade, principal architect at Arch11, calls the new Pearl Izumi corporate headquarters a fragmented design barn. That might not be the most glitzy description for the buzzing home base of the manufacturer of some of the world’s most sought-after performance apparel, cycling gear, and footwear—but the name is nevertheless fitting.
Architecture Organization: STHLMNYC
From New York to Stockholm, STHLMNYC Opens a Dialogue about Adapting Architecture to Future Uncertainties
Missed Connections
The Tanglefoot Trail, Mississippi’s longest rail-trail conversion, leads 43.6 miles through the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in the Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area. It passes through fields of cotton and mature hardwood forests and traces part of the path of the Gulf and Ship Island Railroad built under the leadership of Colonel William C. Falkner, William Faulkner’s great grandfather, offering views of goat herds, granaries, plantations, prehistoric burial mounds, and trees draped in gothic vines of kudzu.
Com-Ed's Power-Line Prairie
Along the windswept shoreline of Lake Michigan sit more than six miles of beaches bordered by wetland, black oak savanna, and prairie habitats that together encompass Illinois Beach State Park. In this protected area of more than 4,000 acres, a sunbather might catch a glimpse of a rare shoreland bird gliding above the surf.

About

Jeff Link

magazine writing

editing

grant writing

reporting

interviewing

sourcing

blogging

storytelling

creative writing

content strategy

Jeff Link is an award-winning journalist and graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He tells humanly drawn stories about the ways in which design and technology affect people, places and the environment. His work has appeared in Fast Company, WIRED, Dwell, Architect, Architectural Record, Built In, Green Building & Design, Landscape Architecture Magazine, and Keep Growing, among other publications. His story "Lethal Glass Landscapes" earned a 2021 Jesse H. Neal Award for Best Single Article, and his 2013 story "Grown in Detroit" was selected as a finalist for a Folio Eddie Award in the Single Article category.

Jeff’s expertise as a storyteller draws on former experiences writing and editing in several professional settings. Most recently, as a staff reporter for the tech website Built In, he covered user experience and design. His stories included interviews with current or former design leaders at Facebook, Amazon, Tinder, Square, Slack, Waymo, Spotify, Adobe, InVision, Uber, GitHub, DropBox and Dribbble. Many of these stories were widely shared on social media channels, and reached upwards of 30,000 unique page views per month.

Prior to that, as a development officer for the Chicago Botanic Garden, Jeff prepared grant proposals for prospective partners whose funding provided support and training to BIPOC youth and adults in fields such as urban agriculture, plant conservation, and climate science. His work helped secure or sustain annual funding of more than $400,000 from corporate donors, such as HSBC, Walgreens, and Kraft Foods; foundations such as the Chicago Community Trust, Leo S. Guthman Fund and the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust; and government agencies, including the Illinois State Library and United States Department of Agriculture.

As NTI Upstream’s senior editor, Jeff directed the nonfiction publishing division. This included managing title acquisition, maintaining the editorial tone and appearance of the company's print and online materials, executing strategic branding campaigns, and envisioning the voice of the firm across a variety of digital platforms. Books under his editorial direction were featured in the "New York Times" and “Wall Street Journal,” on NPR's "Weekend Edition," and in numerous televised broadcasts.

Earlier in his career, Jeff taught rhetoric and composition in DePaul University’s First-Year Writing Program and creative writing at The University of Iowa. He began his career as a journalist for Suburban News Publications.