Appendix A

Committee Members

JANICE BARNES (Co-Chair, she/her/hers), founder of Climate Adaptation Partners, a New York City-based woman-owned business, focuses on planning, advocacy, and partnership-building for climate adaptation. With technical training in architecture and organizational behavior, she helps clients to critically evaluate their risk tolerances and possible adaptation pathways given current and expected hazard exposures and link these to appropriate design and financing or funding options. Working from the intersection of climate change and public health, Barnes links environmental, social, and economic indicators to advance resilience principles and connect knowledge across communities. She co-chairs the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s Climate Impact Assessment Health and Safety Technical Working Group, oversees the New York City Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment, and serves on the board of the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience. She also teaches Public Health, Climate Change, and Cities in a shared appointment at the University of Pennsylvania with Perelman School of Medicine and Weitzman School of Design. Barnes previously led global resilience for Perkins+Will, working with 24 offices across multiple countries to advance resilience in concert with in-country initiatives, and co-chaired the American Institute of Architects National Resilience Working Group. She has a Ph.D. and an M.S. from the University of Michigan, a Master of Architecture from Tulane University, a B.A. from the University of Tennessee, and a certificate in municipal finance from the University of Chicago and in geographic information systems from the University of California, Davis. She values teams’ collective

contributions to broaden transdisciplinary practices. Her message settles on a shared truth about the responsibilities to act on climate change as its implications are increasingly understood: #WeCantUnknowThis.

TRACIE T. SEMPIER (Co-Chair, she/her/hers) is the coastal resilience engagement specialist for the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium. She works with local communities, state and federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, businesses, coastal managers, residents, and K–12 audiences to decrease the negative effects of disasters (natural, technological, and biological) on families, communities, and the environment. Sempier is also the VORTEX-SE engagement coordinator, for which she is creating a model for regional extension programming focused on severe weather, synthesizing research findings to inform application at the local level, and working to create safe sheltering options for vulnerable populations. She is the lead for the Gulf of Mexico Climate and Resilience Community of Practice, for which she utilizes existing networks to build connections with target audiences. Sempier has professional experience in education/outreach with various audiences in formal and informal learning environments. She is a recipient of the Gulf Guardian Award and the Spirit of Community Award for her work on resilience issues in the Gulf of Mexico, and is the recipient of a three-year grant from the Gulf Research Program to fund the Gulf of Mexico Climate and Resilience CoP as it forms an Advisory Committee on Equity to help the CoP consider different points of view and advise on how to engage new partners to include a more inclusive and diverse membership. Sempier earned a B.S. in marine science and biology from the University of Alabama, an M.S. in science and mathematics education at Oregon State University, and a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from Mississippi State University.

KAYODE O. ATOBA (he/him/his) is an associate research scientist at the Institute for a Disaster Resilient Texas at Texas A&M University. He is a mentor and an alumnus of the William Averette Anderson Fund, the first interdisciplinary organization in the United States focused on increasing the number of underrepresented persons in the field of disaster research and planning. Atoba’s research draws on the broader theory of urban planning and hazard resiliency to propose best mitigation and adaptation strategies, and environmental policies that reduce hazard impacts. His research uses quantitative and geospatial methodologies to identify the interactions between the built environment and natural hazards. Atoba’s recent work addresses issues related to property acquisition and buyouts as nonstructural mitigation strategies to reduce flood hazard impacts. He has frequently made statements on hazard mitigation through his website and his LinkedIn profile. Atoba has also published multiple journal articles and

book chapters on hazard mitigation and environmental hazards. One of his recently co-authored article, “Buy Them Out Before They Are Built: Evaluating the Proactive Acquisition of Vacant Land in Flood-Prone Areas,” in Environmental Conservation, emphasizes the benefits of buying flood-prone property before it is flooded. He has also published buyouts research in other journals such as Climate Risk Management, Environmental Hazards, and Sustainability, as well as in a book chapter published by Elsevier. He participated in an expert workshop that was one source for the publication “Property Buyouts Can Be an Effective Solution for Flood-Prone Communities: Improved Federal Policy on Funding and Planning Would Deliver Better Long-Term Outcomes.” Atoba has an M.S. in geographic information systems from Sam Houston State University and a Ph.D. in urban and regional science from Texas A&M University.

GARY S. BELKIN (he/him/his) is director, Billion Minds Project at Columbia University, and chair, COP² (cop2.org). A psychiatrist who approaches mental health as a building block of social policy and progress, he recently founded Billion Minds as a “think-action tank.” The intention of Billion Minds is to link mental health to problems of great scale, and to safeguarding sustainable societies through a humane social climate. COP² was one outcome of that work—a global network aligned about converging growing activity and learning on climate-psychological resilience connections and putting them to global scale. An initial effort from that was completing an implementation roadmap, launched at COP28, for global-sized efforts and campaigns, such as the Race to Resilience, to incorporate the goal of building capacity to promote psychological resilience within the goal of the Sharm El Sheikh Adaptation Agenda to increase the climate resilience of four billion people by 2030. Belkin is also the former executive deputy commissioner in the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene where he led the Division of Mental Hygiene and its development and implementation of the innovative New York City-wide public mental health initiative, ThriveNYC. Before joining city government, he was medical director for behavioral health across the Health and Hospitals Corporation of the City of New York, and served as founding editor-in-chief of the open access journal Global Mental Health. As director of the New York University’s Program in Global Mental Health, Belkin partnered with other groups globally to test and scale community-led models of mental health promotion and access in less resourced countries that are now widely used.

DEBRA M. BUTLER (she/her/hers) is the executive director of the American Society of Adaptation Professionals. Her transdisciplinary research focuses on climate displacement, migration, and resettlement on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Butler has collaborated with Indigenous and placed-based

communities in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Sancti Spiritus, Cuba to examine dynamics of adaptation and resilience in ecological and human communities. Butler was awarded research fellowships from the National Academies of Sciences’ Engineering, and Medicine’s Gulf Research Science Policy Program, National Science Foundation-Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship, and the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Butler’s commitment to Gulf communities is reflected in her service on numerous not-for-profit boards and community organizations including the Climigration Network, Stone Living Lab, and Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences-National Center for Atmospheric Research. As a National Academies’ Gulf Research policy fellow, she worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Region IV Gulf of Mexico Program) with climate-impacted ecological and cultural restoration projects in Turkey Creek, Mississippi; with the the Poarch Band of Creek Indians; and in Dauphin Island, Alabama. Butler has earned an M.B.A. in international business from Brandeis University, an Ed.M. from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a Ph.D. in environmental studies from the University of Massachusetts-Boston. She is a Gulf Coast native.

CRAIG E. COLTEN (he/him/his) is professor emeritus at Louisiana State University. His principal training is in historical geography, with foci on human adaptation to environmental conditions and settlement geography. Colten’s recent research has focused on hazards and community resilience in the Gulf Coast, adaptation to environmental change, and environmental migration as an adaptive strategy. He is senior advisor at the Water Institute of the Gulf, a fellow of the American Association of Geographers, and recipient of the association’s 2022 Gilbert White Distinguished Public Service Honor. Colten held the Carl O. Sauer Professorship at Louisiana State University and received a Rainmaker Award from the university. He has received a Landhaus Fellowship with the Rachel Carson Center in Munich. Previously, Colten was on the faculty at Texas State University, was a senior project manager for PHR Environmental Consultants in the D.C. area, held several positions with the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources, and served as the chair of the Isle de Jean Charles Resettlement Project Academic Advisory Committee. He has reported to academic and applied audiences at professional conferences that the absence of community relocation considerations is a shortcoming in current Louisiana state coastal restoration projects. Colten has authored and co-authored articles in academic publications with the viewpoint that current Louisiana state coastal restoration projects do not adequately take into consideration community relocation. He has also authored several books, with the most recent one entitled State of Disaster: A Historical Geography of Louisiana’s Land Loss Crisis. Colten has a Ph.D. in geography from Syracuse University.

KATHERINE J. CURTIS (she/her/hers) is professor of community and environmental sociology and associate director of the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her work is centered in demography and extends to spatial, environmental, rural, and applied demography, and focuses on two central themes: population-environment interactions (most centrally the relationship between demographic, economic, and environmental forces) and spatial and temporal dimensions of social and economic inequality (most centrally historical and local forces perpetuating racial disparities). In her work, Curtis adopts place-based theoretical frameworks and employs advanced spatial and spatiotemporal statistical approaches to analyze questions about inequality, which has profound and far-reaching impacts on population well-being. Professional service and awards include Diversity Committee of the Rural Sociological Society, Program Committee of the Population Association of America, associate editor of Rural Sociology, editorial board of Spatial Demography, and National Experiment Station Section Excellence in Multistate Research Award (W4001 Multistate Research Project on the Social, Economic and Environmental Causes and Consequences of Demographic Change in Rural America, past chair). She earned her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Washington.

HARRIET FESTING¹ (she/her/hers) is co-founder and executive director of the Anthropocene Alliance (A2), a Florida-based nonprofit that combats climate change and environmental abuse by building grassroots coalitions in the communities most affected by flooding, toxic waste, wildfires, drought, and heat. A2 has more than 250 member-communities in 41 U.S. states and territories. She spent her time working for UK government leading research and advising ministers on public attitudes about energy and climate change policy. Festing was director of fundraising for His Royal Highness Prince Charles’s Foundation for urban design and architecture in London. Prior to founding A2, she worked for the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago where she undertook ground-breaking research on urban flooding in the United States. Festing’s research won several awards, led to state legislation, and preceded the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine publication Framing the Challenge of Urban Flooding in the United States, on which committee she was a member. A2 has released two policy statements on climate migration, A10-Point Platform (and Anti-Platform) on Climate Change and The Great American Climate Migration: A Roundtable Discussion by Grassroots Leaders, both of which take the viewpoint that climate change is disproportionately affecting low-income and marginalized communities. A2 is also a signatory to a white paper

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¹ Until December 2022.

produced by the Coastal Flood Resilience Project that recommends specific policy actions to be undertaken by the federal government, including the creation and funding of a federal Coastal Community Relocation Assistance Program. Her work with A2 advances community transformation by building grassroots coalitions in the communities most badly affected by climate change, including current work in Port Arthur, Texas, helping community leaders to survey their residents to see what climate migration might look like for this community. Festing has an M.Phil. in business economics from the University of London.

LYNN R. GOLDMAN (she/her/hers), a pediatrician and epidemiologist, is the Michael and Lori Milken Dean and professor of environmental and occupational health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University. She was previously professor of environmental health sciences at the Bloomberg School of Public Health; assistant administrator for toxic substances at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where she directed the Office of Chemical Safety and Prevention; and chief of the division of Environmental and Occupational Disease Control at the California Department of Public Health. Goldman is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Environmental Health Matters Initiative. She formerly chaired the board for the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health and has served in advisory capacities to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and MITRE. Goldman holds a B.S. and an M.S. from the University of California, Berkeley; an M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco; and an M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University. She completed a pediatric residency at the University of California, San Fransisco’s Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland. She serves as a trustee for the Environmental Defense Fund.

E. BARRETT RISTROPH (she/her/hers) is owner of Ristroph Law, Planning, and Research, which provides services at a reasonable cost to tribes, communities, and agencies related to natural resources, hazard mitigation, government, and climate change adaptation and relocation. She is a lawyer, planner, mediator, evaluator, and researcher based in south Louisiana and sometimes Alaska. Her work has included assisting Newtok Village, Alaska, with relocating to Mertarvik; establishing a climate change program for an Alaskan inter-tribal organization; assisting tribes with hazard mitigation and adaption planning; working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on environmental review for Louisiana coastal restoration projects; and working on reports for international agreements

related to environmental and human rights issues. She volunteers her time to various coalitions on adaptation and has served as a mentor through the Louisiana Bar Association and the American Society of Adaptation Professionals. She holds a Ph.D in adaptation planning and a J.D. She is a frequent presenter at conferences on the experience of Newtok residents and has published articles such as “Strategies for Planned Community Relocation: A Case Study of Newtok Village, Alaska” in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences.

CATHERINE L. ROSS (she/her/hers) is Regents Professor Emeritus of City and Regional Planning and Civil and Environmental Engineering and Georgia Power Professor of Excellence at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her work includes a multi-disciplinary focus on resilience, analytics, transportation impact assessment, Mobility-as-a-Service, and performance management. She was the first executive director of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority and deputy director of Georgia Tech’s Tier 1 Center for Transportation System Productivity and Management. Ross is an internationally renowned scholar and a global thought leader, author of Megaregions Planning for Global Competitiveness, and co-author of Health Impact Assessment in the United States and the Inner City. She is chairman of the board of the Auto Club Group (American Automobile Association) and a board member of the Health Effects Institute. She has extensive private-sector experience, serving previously as president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, president of Catherine Ross and Associates, and vice president of Euquant.

GAVIN P. SMITH (he/him/his) is a professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at North Carolina State University. His research focuses on hazard mitigation, disaster recovery, and climate change adaptation and the integration of research and practice through deep community engagement. Smith’s current research includes assessing the state of disaster resilient design education at U.S. universities; analyzing a national survey assessing the role of states in building the capacity of local governments to implement hazard mitigation grants; and conducting a comparative assessment of hazard-prone housing acquisition programs in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. He has developed a graduate certificate program in disaster resilient policy, engineering, and design and is helping to coordinate a university-wide effort focused on disaster resilience spanning research, teaching, and engagement-related activities. Smith is the author of Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: A Review of the United States Disaster Assistance Framework and served as the co-editor of the text Adapting to Climate Change: Lessons from Natural

Hazards Planning. He has received funding from several jurisdictions—including Louisiana; Queensland, Australia; the U.S. Virgin Islands; and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—for advising on hazard adaptation and mitigation strategies, coastal management, and disaster response. Smith has written numerous peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and practice-oriented reports that address hazard mitigation and disaster recovery issues. Recent articles discuss lessons from buyouts and their application to managed retreat strategies, development of a hazard overlay districts to adapt to climate change-induced hazards, and a governance-based approach to improve recovery outcomes. He holds a Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from Texas A&M University.

NATALIE L. SNIDER (she/her/hers) is currently serving as a science integrator at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Integration and Application Network. Until recently, Snider was the associate vice president for climate resilient coasts and watersheds for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Her work centers on building just climate resilience through the adaptation, transition, and transformation of the socioecological system, focusing on governance and adaptive management, to meet the challenges of climate change impacts to coastal and riverine ecosystems and communities. Snider previously worked at Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, leading efforts on the Louisiana Coastal Master Plan, and as the science director at the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. She has received a Champion of Inspiration award from the National Conference on Volunteering and Service, a Make a Difference Day Award from USA Today, a Women in Conservation Award from the National Audubon Society, and a Coastal Stewardship Award from the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. Snider has actively engaged with the challenge of climate change through tweets and blogs, including “4 Ways to Reduce Disproportionate Flood Risk and Build Resilience for All Communities” and “Building Climate Resilience Requires a Whole-of-Government Approach. Here’s How Louisiana Is Making It Happen” on EDF’s blog; she has also co-authored the article “Eroding Land and Erasing Place: A Qualitative Study of Place Attachment, Risk Perception, and Coastal Land Loss in Southern Louisiana” in Sustainability and “Responding to Flood Risk in Louisiana: The Roles of Place Attachment, Emotions and Location” in Natural Hazards. She has a B.S. in wildlife and fisheries management and an M.S. in oceanography and coastal sciences, both from Louisiana State University, and a Ph.D. in marine and estuarine environmental sciences from the University of Maryland.

COURTNEY S. THOMAS TOBIN (she/her/hers) is an associate professor in community health sciences and associate dean for equity, diversity, and inclusion at the Fielding School of Public Health and a faculty associate of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). As a medical sociologist, she integrates traditional sociological theories with perspectives from public health, social psychology, medicine, and the biological sciences to examine the social, psychological, and biological (i.e., biopsychosocial) pathways that contribute to the health and longevity of Black Americans. Her research program makes conceptual and empirical contributions to three interrelated areas of inquiry: (a) psychosocial pathways to embodiment, including the interconnections between mental and physical health; (b) health risks and resources across the life course; and (c) racialized stress and coping processes among Black Americans. She was a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in public health and psychology prior to joining the faculty at UCLA. She holds a B.S. in psychology from Xavier University of Louisiana and a Ph.D. in sociology from Vanderbilt University.

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