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Liz McCartney co-founded SBP in 2006 with Zack Rosenburg after spending two weeks volunteering in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Dissatisfied with the state of recovery, Liz and Zack actively began surfacing problems to advocate for much needed systems change so that people would suffer less.

Liz currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer, leading SBP’s ongoing long-term rebuilding work in 10  disaster-impacted communities around the country. Through SBP’s partnership with Toyota, the former teacher led her team to reduce the average time to rebuild a house from 121 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 and Zack co-authored the book, Getting Home, which was released in March of 2019. Getting Home chronicles the founding of SBP, and how SBP partnered with Toyota to apply the lean principles of the Toyota Production System (TPS) to rebuild homes and lives following natural disasters throughout the U.S. and its territories, creating a culture of continuous improvement within SBP to reduce the duration of time between disaster and recovery. To date, SBP has rebuilt more than 1860 homes and has grown to include more than 30,000 volunteers annually, 240 AmeriCorps members and 76 staff.

In 2008, Liz was named the CNN Hero of the Year and was nominated as a CNN SuperHero of the Decade in 2016 for her continued work in disaster recovery in South Louisiana following devastating floods that summer.

Zack co-founded SBP with his wife Liz McCartney after volunteering in New Orleans six months after Hurricane Katrina.  Disturbed by the lack rebuilding and predictability of recovery for most families, Zack and Liz began asking hard questions to understand the factors leading to the intolerable conditions faced by disaster survivors. From this desire to minimize the suffering caused by delayed recovery, the trial attorney and school teacher began rebuilding homes for New Orleans most vulnerable populations.

Leveraging private sector innovations from Toyota and philosophies from UPS, Zack transformed SBP, adopting a culture of problem solving by teaching staff and AmeriCorps members to surface them at every level. This ethos of continuous discontent has enabled SBP become the leading long-term recovery nonprofit, rebuilding more than 1,860 homes nationwide, and has grown to include more than 30,000 volunteers annually, 240 AmeriCorps members and 76 staff.

SBP now looks at a host of interventions designed to shrink the time between disaster and recovery, resulting in much needed systems change in an otherwise unchanging landscape that is disaster recovery. Zack and Liz co-authored the book, Getting Home, which was released in March of 2019.

Getting Home chronicles the founding of SBP, and how SBP partnered with Toyota to apply the lean principles of the Toyota Production System (TPS) to rebuild homes and lives following natural disasters throughout the U.S. and its territories, creating a culture of continuous improvement within SBP to reduce the duration of time between disaster and recovery.