Embedding health into every build: How Clare Gallagher shapes sustainable futures across Australia

Recognized with the 2025 WELL Changemaker Award for her dedicated stewardship in delivering WELL education, Clare Gallagher has spent nearly a decade advocating for human health within the built environment. As National Sustainability Manager at Built and a member of the GBCA Technical Advisory Group, Clare uses her WELL AP credential to bridge corporate strategy with ground-level project execution across Australia and New Zealand.

How did you first hear about the WELL AP? What made you interested in the credential?

Through our Barrack Place Project in Sydney in 2016, one of the first projects to pursue WELL in Australia.

What’s one way becoming a WELL AP has impacted your life and/or career?

I have always been motivated to work on projects that are better for both the environment and people. The WELL AP qualification has given me a technical, human-centered framework to view our work through, an aspect I connect intrinsically to. Understanding how proven, preventative health outcomes can be embedded into the built environment, and successfully delivering these outcomes in our projects, has been deeply fulfilling.

What are some things you’ve been able to do (or you plan to do) as a WELL AP you couldn’t before? Why are those things important to you?

It has open up the conversation on the health impacts of the strategies we consider on a project and provided a benchmark to achieve that ensures these aspirations and outcomes aren’t left behind or forgotten through the busy design, construction and delivery phases.

Did anything about the WELL AP process surprise you—from registering for the exam to your experience post-accreditation? What was it? How would you prepare WELL AP candidates for that?

The content is technical, but as it is about human health I think it is something everyone can relate to and what you learn preparing for a WELL AP exam has relevance well beyond the Built Environment.

What’s something about the WELL AP—or the WELL movement in general—that isn’t often discussed, but you think deserves more attention

Research and evidence to change outdated conventional standards regarding thermal comfort.

Do you have any advice you’d give potential WELL AP candidates?

Commit to attaining this credential - invest in expanding your capability and knowledge.

What does well-being mean to you? How do you incorporate it into your life and routine?

It means balance to me. Taking 5 minutes to stand in the sunshine in the morning, enjoying the peace of the moment and the knowledge that this is kickstarting the chemicals in your body for action. Awareness of the day to day activities like reading, cooking, moving, or sleeping that enrich and support wellbeing and acknowledging as I do these things that they are an investment in health not just a task.

Is there a specific WELL concept, feature or set of features that have really resonated with you and that you’ve incorporated into your own life?

The circadian rhythm features is my favorite. I’m fascinated by our internal clocks and rhythms and the times of the day or month and understanding personally when I am innately best at doing something.

Learn more about what it takes to become a WELL AP!