Executive Director, Global Head of Sustainability Real Assets Morgan Stanley Investment Management

Mona Benisi is an Executive Director of Morgan Stanley and the Global Head of Sustainability for Real Assets. In partnership with the investment teams, Mona leads the strategic development and execution of ESG initiatives for Morgan Stanley Real Assets. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Mona was the Global Head of Sustainability for Simon Property Group. Mona previously was a member of the Corporate Sustainability Office at Siemens Corporate Headquarters in Munich, Germany. Mona was the recent Chair of Nareit’s Real Estate Sustainability Council and was recognized for her leadership in the field by Environmental Leader as the recipient of the “Person of the Year” Award in 2018. Mona received a B.A. in International Business from Georg- Simon-Ohm University in Nuremberg, Germany and a M.S. in Environmental Studies from Columbia University in New York.

Partner, McKinsey & Company

Brodie is a leader of McKinsey’s work on climate risk in the real-estate and infrastructure sectors. He serves real-estate organizations, city governments, urban technology providers, and infrastructure investors and operators. He has advised several cities on climate-adaptation strategies (including improving infrastructure resilience to flood, fire, heat, and other hazards) and on the integration of physical adaptation and mitigation measures into economic growth, mobility, and other socioeconomic objectives.

Founder and CEO, DeltaTerra Capital

David Burt, CFA is Founder and CEO of DeltaTerra Capital. David has spent more than 20 years applying his imagination, synthesis talents, and quantitative skills to help institutional investors get the most out of their real estate and structured finance investments.

Before founding DeltaTerra, David was a Partner and Portfolio Manager at Wellington Management Company. Prior to Wellington, he built investment processes at BlueMountain Capital, AlderTree Capital (a 2006 startup he founded to bet against the mortgage credit bubble), BlackRock Financial Management, and State Street Research and Management. He began his career as a Real Estate Economist at Property & Portfolio Research, Inc. David has been a CFA® Charter holder since 2002 and received a BS in Mathematics, with a minor in Economics, from MIT in 1997.

David serves as a trustee for the Boston Children’s Museum and is establishing a foundation to help preserve climate stability for future generations.

Director of Planning, San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission

Jessica Fain, AICP, is the Director of Planning at the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC). She oversees the State agency’s policy development and planning initiatives that aim to protect, conserve, and balance the ecological, economic, and societal interests associated with the Bay and its shoreline communities, with a core focus on adapting to rising sea level. She also directs Bay Adapt, a new initiative that seeks to establish regional agreement on the actions necessary to protect people and the natural and built environment from rising sea level. Prior joining BCDC in 2018, Ms. Fain worked in planning and resiliency in New York City, as a Waterfront Planner at the New York City Department of City Planning and then as the Program Director at the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay. She also was a Capital Projects Coordinator at the New York City Public Design Commission. She has taught as part-time faculty at The New School, and has been a guest lecturer and critic at various schools. Ms. Fain holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Chief Economist, Redfin

Daryl Fairweather is the chief economist of Redfin. Prior to joining Redfin she was a senior economist at Amazon working on problems related to employee engagement and managing a team of analysts. During the housing crisis, Daryl worked as a researcher at the Boston Fed studying why homeowners entered foreclosure. Daryl received her Bachelor’s of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received her Ph.D. and Master’s degrees in economics at the University of Chicago where she specialized in behavioral economics.

Regional Director North America, Resilient Cities Network

Laurian has worked in the private, public and philanthropic sectors for 20 years, focusing on resilient city building, environment, and flood risk management challenges. She has applied her training in water resources engineering and landscape architecture to programs in Canada, where she is from, and more recently to 100 Resilient Cities in New York before joining the Resilient Cities Network. Here, she works alongside Chief Resilience Officers and global colleagues to advance innovative and impactful solutions that realize the vision of equitable and resilient cities.

President, HR&A Advisors

Jeff Hébert is President of HR&A Advisors and is leader in resilience planning and community revitalization. He works with cities to develop strategies that mitigate future social, economic, and physical shocks and stresses. He is currently leading projects in New York City, Buffalo, Miami, New Orleans, Houston, Dallas, Newark and Los Angeles. Mr. Hébert previously served the City of New Orleans in many capacities in the recovery of Hurricane Katrina, including as the First Deputy Mayor & Chief Administrative Officer, Chief Resilience Officer, and as Executive Director of the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority. He has been an adjunct faculty member at the Tulane University School of Architecture, is Vice Chairman of FUSE Corps, and serves on the Policy Advisory Board of The Reinvestment Fund, the Advisory Board of the ULI Center for Sustainability and Economic Performance, and the Board of the Urban Design Forum. Mr. Hébert holds a bachelor’s degree from New York University, a master’s degree in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is a graduate of the Achieving Excellence in Community Development program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Jeff was honored as a participant in the Future Leaders program (PIPA) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France in 2018.

President and Founder, Citrine Investment Group

Lynn has 25 years of experience in institutional and entrepreneurial real estate investment. Over her career, Lynn has completed $10 billion in transactions of various forms, including complex joint ventures with operating partners, direct purchases and sales of real estate, public market transactions, mezzanine investments, and other highly structured transactions. Her current focus is on impact investments to improve the situations of people living in Chicago’s most profoundly disinvested communities. Lynn raised a $50M opportunity zone fund in 2019 for an Indianapolis real estate group, previously ran an absolute return, value oriented long/short hedge fund focused on publicly traded real estate and related sectors, and has also owned and operated her own real estate. Prior to founding Citrine, Lynn spent seven years as a Senior Vice President and partner at GEM Realty Capital, a real estate securities and private equity firm. Prior to GEM, Lynn was a Vice President at The Carlyle Group and worked at Goldman Sachs (The Whitehall Funds). Lynn is a magna cum laude graduate of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Associate, David Baker Architects

Brad is an Associate at David Baker Architects where he offers unique expertise in design, housing affordability, and prefabrication, coupled with a deep commitment to making a positive impact on the world. Brad has guided the design and construction of hundreds of affordable and market-rate homes for a wide range of residents—formerly homeless individuals, low-income families, tech workers, and more—in a variety of urban contexts. Brad is currently Project Architect for a 300-unit modular project in Silicon Valley, as well as a 100-unit supportive housing development for formerly homeless in downtown San Francisco.

Brad also co-leads the DBA’s prefabricated (modular) multifamily housing efforts and is heavily involved in DBA-LAB, which is the firm’s research, post-occupancy-evaluation, and pro bono arm. Active in the AIA, ULI, and SPUR, he is an member of the AIA Housing and Community Development Knowledge Community, leads the ULI San Francisco Climate Resilience Working Group, is Vice Chair of the ULI San Francisco Policy and Practice Committee, and serves on the SPUR Oakland Programming Committee.

Brad holds a Masters in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate, he studied architecture at Washington University in St. Louis.

Climate Photographer

Pilot and photographer, Alex MacLean, has flown his plane over much of the United States documenting the landscape. Trained as an architect, he has portrayed the history and evolution of the land from vast agricultural patterns to city grids, recording changes brought about by human intervention and natural processes. His powerful and descriptive images provide clues to understanding the relationship between the natural and constructed environments. MacLean’s photographs have been exhibited widely in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia, and are found in private, public and university collections. He has won numerous awards, including the 2009 CORINE International Book Award, the American Academy of Rome’s Prix de Rome in Landscape Architecture for 2003-2004, and grants from foundations such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting in 2014. MacLean is the author of eleven books including, Up on the Roof: New York’s Hidden Skyline Spaces (2012), and Las Vegas | Venice (2010), Chroniques Aeriennes: L’art d’Alex MacLean (2010). MacLean maintains a studio and lives in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

Assistant to the City Administrator/Chief Resilience Officer, City of Oakland

As the Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Oakland, Alexandria leads city-wide resilience building efforts, with the goal of helping Oakland prepare for, withstand, and bounce back from the “shocks” – catastrophic events like earthquakes, wildfires, and floods – and “stresses” – systemic challenges like racial equity, climate change, and economic inequality – that are increasingly a part of 21st century life. Alexandria joins a network of Chief Resilience Officers around the world, convened by the Global Resilient Cities Network, in an effort to promote urban resilience in all levels of government.

Vice President of Recovery and Resilience, New York City Housing Authority

Joy Sinderbrand joined NYCHA in 2016 as the Vice President for the Recovery and Resilience Department. Created in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, this department is responsible for capital projects associated with the impacts of that storm, as well as preparing the agency more broadly for the future impacts of climate change. Joy manages the execution of projects at 35 developments under NYCHA’s record $3 billion FEMA grant program and other disaster recovery funding. To date, all major contracts have been awarded and almost $2 billion has been invested in residential buildings housing 60,000 of the most vulnerable New Yorkers.

Joy received a joint Master’s in Public Affairs and Urban & Regional Planning from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Maryland Honors College. She was a Coro Fellow and an AmeriCorps member. A third-generation Brooklynite, she lives with her husband and two children in Brooklyn.

Principal and Consulting Actuary, Milliman

Nancy is a Principal with Milliman – San Francisco who manages an actuarial consulting practice that specializes in Insurtech, climate resilience and catastrophic property risk.  At the forefront of innovation in flood risk, her team provides state-of-the-art tools, technology, and analysis to insurers, reinsurers, producers and industry groups in the flood insurance space.  Nancy is the primary contact on Milliman’s engagement on NFIP Risk Rating 2.0 and provides strategic advice and support to FEMA. Widely known as a thought leader in the area of climate resilience, Nancy advises regulators and policymakers on changing catastrophic risk and property insurance availability and affordability.  She was awarded the American Academy of Actuaries Outstanding Volunteerism Award for her participation on the Flood Insurance Work Group.

Chief Resilience Officer and Director of Emergency Management, City of Charleston, SC

Mark Wilbert is the Chief Resilience Officer and Senior Policy Advisor to the Mayor for the City of Charleston, South Carolina.  Mark is focused on leading City Staff and the Charleston Community in planning for the effects of changing weather, including flooding and sea level rise in a thriving city of 150,000 residents and seven million visitors annually.

Since becoming Charleston’s first Chief Resilience Officer in 2018, Mark has led the development and implementation of the City of Charleston’s Flooding and Sea Level Rise Strategy, and served as city project lead for the Charleston Dutch Dialogues.  He also continues as city project lead for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Flood Risk Management Study for the Charleston Peninsula and successfully led the city team through the recently completed All Hazards Risk and Vulnerability Analysis.

Prior to assuming his current role, Mark served as the City’s Emergency Management Director for five years following active duty service in the U.S. Coast Guard for 35 years, retiring as Captain.  During his Coast Guard career, Mark served in roles involving Search and Rescue, Law Enforcement and protecting the maritime environment.  He was also involved in planning and responding to numerous weather related disasters and events including the G-8 Summit in 2004 and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in 2010.

Editor-in-chief, The Drawdown Review and co-editor of All We Can Save

Dr. Katharine Wilkinson is an author, strategist, and teacher, working to heal the planet we call home. Her writings include The Drawdown Review, the New York Times bestseller Drawdown, and Between God & Green. With Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson she co-edited All We Can Save, an anthology of writings by women climate leaders, and co-founded The All We Can Save Project.

As principle writer and editor-in-chief at Project Drawdown, Dr. Wilkinson leads the organization’s work to share climate solutions with audiences around the world. She co-hosts the forthcoming podcast A Matter of Degrees and speaks widely, including at National Geographic, Skoll World Forum, and the United Nations. Her TED Talk on climate and gender equality has more than 1.8 million views, and she collaborates with Mary Robinson and others to advance the feminist climate renaissance.

A homegrown Atlantan, Dr. Wilkinson holds a doctorate in geography and environment from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and a BA in religion from Sewanee, where she is now a visiting professor. In 2019 Time magazine named Dr. Wilkinson one of 15 “women who will save the world.” She is happiest on a mountain or a horse. Find her @DrKWilkinson.

Deputy Directory, Mystic River Watershed Association & Founder, Resilient Mystic Collaborative

Julie Wormser is the deputy director of the Mystic River Watershed Association and founder of the Resilient Mystic Collaborative.  Since its launch in September 2018, the RMC has grown to include 20 municipalities and has secured over $2.5 million in funding to pursue regional climate preparedness projects.  As Executive Director of The Boston Harbor Association, Wormser was instrumental in drawing attention to Boston’s need to prepare for coastal flooding from extreme storms and sea level rise.  She coauthored Preparing for the Rising Tide and Designing With Water and co-led the Boston Living with Water international design competition with the City of Boston and Boston Society of Architects.  She has a BA in biology from Swarthmore College and an MPA from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government