Katharine Mach is a Senior Research Scientist at Stanford University, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and a Visiting Investigator at the Carnegie Institution for Science. She leads the Stanford Environment Assessment Facility (SEAF).
Mach’s research assesses climate change risks and response options to address increased flooding, extreme heat, wildfire, and other hazards. Through innovative approaches to integrating evidence, she informs effective and equitable adaptations to the risks. From 2010 until 2015, Mach co-directed the scientific activities of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This work on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability culminated in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report and its Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. The associated global scientific collaborations have supported diverse climate policies and actions, including the Paris Agreement.
Mach is a lead author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and the US Fourth National Climate Assessment. She serves as an associate deputy editor for Climatic Change and an advisory board member for the Aspen Global Change Institute and Carbon180. Across all of her research projects, Mach engages in relevant policy processes, and she frequently discusses climate change risk and adaptation with the media, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and communities. Mach received her PhD from Stanford University and AB summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Shavonne F. Smith is a member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation and resides on the territory on the Eastern End of Long Island, NY. She has worked for the Shinnecock Indian Nation for 13 years and became the Director of the Shinnecock Environmental Department in 2011. Under her direction, a multimedia environmental program has been developed to meet the needs of the Shinnecock people, in the ever-changing world. In her role as Director, she provided leadership to many projects including a major 3-year shoreline restoration. In 2016, she received an Environmental Champion Award from EPA Region 2. As a member of the National Tribal Caucus and the National Tribal Toxics Council, Shavonne works to help protect human health throughout Indian Country. She strongly believes in the value of partnerships and the exchange of information, values, and resources it cultivates.
Chenae Bullock, also known as “Sagkomanau Mishoon Netooeusqua” (I lead canoe I am Butterflywoman) is an enrolled Shinnecock Indian Nation Tribal Member and descendant of the Montauk Tribe in Long Island New York. Both are sister tribes to the several east coastal Algonquin tribes on live on the northeastern seaboard. Chenae is a historian, activist, preservationist and traditionalist. She has over 10 years of experience as an Indigenous perspective Historian. She has worked at many accredited Indigenous museums such as the Shinnecock Indian Museum and cultural center, Plimoth Plantation, and Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. She has extensive experience in national and state archival research experience, federal & state legislated histories relative to indigenous people’s issues. She also has a few years of cultural resource monitoring for archaeological projects.
She has established Moskehtu Consulting Firm— The Exclusive Cultural and Heritage Consulting Service to the lack of cultural competency occurring in the governmental sectors, corporate sectors, and in individual lives. As an indigenous person who not only has the academic background regarding indigenous people’s position when it comes to history and environmental issues, she also lives it every day. Her aim has been to start a company that can consult with clients, to create stewardships in these areas that affect every one of us.
Susanne Moser, Ph.D., is Director and Principal Researcher of Susanne Moser Research & Consulting in Santa Cruz, California. She is also a Social Science Research Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University and a Research Associate at the University of California-Santa Cruz, Institute for Marine Sciences. Previously, she served as a Research Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado; was a staff scientist for climate change at the Union of Concerned Scientists; and a research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and at the Heinz Center in Washington, DC.
Susi’s work focuses on adaptation to climate change, vulnerability, resilience, climate change communication, social change, decision support and the interaction between scientists, policy-makers and the public. She is a geographer by training (Ph.D. 1997, Clark University) with an interests in how social science can inform society’s responses to this global challenge. She has worked in coastal areas, urban and rural communities, with forest-reliant communities, and on human health issues.
Susi contributed to Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports, served as Review Editor on the IPCC’s Special Report on “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation,” and is a member of of Scientific Steering Committee for the IPCC’s Special Report on the “Impacts of 1.5 Deg C and Associated Emissions Pathways.” She was also a Convening Lead Author for the coastal chapter of the Third US National Climate Assessment (NCA), and a member of the federal advisory committee to that assessment. Over the years, she has advised federal, state and local governments, nongovernmental organizations, professional societies, and foundations on various aspects of climate change.
She is a co-editor with Max Boykoff (University of Colorado-Boulder) on Successful Adaptation to Climate Change (2013, Routledge) and previously co-edited a ground-breaking anthology on climate change communication, called Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change (2007, Cambridge University Press) with Lisa Dilling (University of Colorado-Boulder). Her work has been recognized through fellowships in the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program, the UCAR Leadership Academy, Kavli Frontiers of Science Program, the Donella Meadows Leadership Program, the Google Science Communication Program, and the Walton Sustainability Solutions Program at Arizona State University.
Richard H. Moss is a climate scientist and leads the advisory committee on applied climate assessment. This committee continues the work of the Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment announced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2016, but that was disbanded in 2017. Previously, Moss was a decision-support scientist working at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Joint Global Change Research Institute. His research focuses on development and use of scenarios; vulnerability, adaptation and resilience to global environmental change; and decision support science-data-driven analysis of use of science in applications. Moss has also served as Director of the Office of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, been a member of the executive committee and author of prior national climate assessments, and has served as technical support director for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Moss is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program, and received the Department of Energy’s Distinguished Associate award. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University in public and international affairs.
MODERATOR
Andrew Revkin is one of America’s most honored writers on environmental sustainability and the role of communication innovation in fostering progress on a fast-forward, noisy planet. Most recently, he was the National Geographic Society’s Strategic Adviser for Science and Environmental Journalism, expanding support and grants for global sustainability-focused journalism and writing. That move, in 2018, followed three decades of ground-breaking journalism, including 14 years at The New York Times as a reporter and 6 after his Dot Earth blog moved to the Opinion section in 2010. He began writing on climate change in the 1980s and never stopped. Revkin has won most of the top awards in science journalism. From 2010 to 2016, he was also senior fellow for environmental understanding at Pace University, where he developed courses in online communication and filmmaking focused on sustainability. He has written acclaimed books on humanity’s weather and climate learning journey, global warming, the changing Arctic and the assault on the Amazon rain forest. In spare moments, he is a performing songwriter.
WELCOME REMARKS
Alex de Sherbinin is the Associate Director for Science Applications at the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), an environmental data and analysis center within The Earth Institute at Columbia University specializing in the human aspects of global environmental change. He also serves as deputy manager of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC); co-Coordinator of the Population-Environment Research Network (PERN); co-chair of the International Council for Science (ICSU) WDS-CODATA Citizen Science Data Task Group; and co-author of the bi-annual Environmental Performance Index (EPI). He is a member of the scientific committee of the ICSU World Data System (WDS), the editorial board of The Geographical Journal, and the advisory committee for the Platform on Disaster Displacement, and holds a visiting appointment with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Dr. de Sherbinin is a geographer whose research interests focus on the human aspects of global environmental change and geospatial data applications, integration, and dissemination. He is lead or co-author on 55 peer reviewed articles and chapters, including lead authored articles appearing in Annual Reviews of Environment and Resources, Climatic Change, Environmental Research Letters, Global Environmental Change, Science, and Scientific American. He has written on a range of topics, including climate vulnerability mapping; climate change and migration; urban climate vulnerability and resilience; population dynamics and the environment; environmental indicators; and remote sensing applications for environmental treaties.
Dr. de Sherbinin holds a PhD in Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation from ITC at the University of Twente (Netherlands), and MA and BA degrees in geography from Syracuse University and Dartmouth College, respectively. Prior to joining CIESIN, he served as a USAID Population-Environment Fellow with the Social Policy Program of International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN, Gland, Switzerland), and a Population Geographer at the Population Reference Bureau (PRB, Washington, DC). From 1984-1986 he served as an agricultural extension agent with the U.S. Peace Corps in Mauritania, West Africa.
He has profiles on ResearchGate and LinkedIn, a Twitter feed, and blog postings through the Earth Institute’s State of the Planet, CODATA and WDS blogs.