2023 Climate Service Providers Academy

Do your design, architecture, engineering, or planning clients count on you to help them address climate challenges? Do you want to encourage your company to prioritize climate resilience in the work you do? Do you work - or want to work - in the Great Lakes, South Central, the Caribbean, California/Nevada, or The North/Mid-Atlantic? Then the 2023 Climate Service Providers Academy is for you.

Hosted by the American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP) and sponsored by the NOAA Climate Adaptation Partnerships program, this virtual academy will give you the tools you need to develop higher-quality climate services and help your business succeed in the rapidly evolving climate services marketplace. You will come away with:

New skills for accessing the very best climate data and information tailored to states and regions across the US including: Great Lakes, South Central, Caribbean, North/Mid-Atlantic, California, and Nevada.
Sophisticated knowledge and relevant examples of the strategies and approaches that constitute high-quality climate change adaptation and resilience practice across North America.
Connections to complementary businesses and potential partners and collaborators.

Workshop Format

The Climate Service Providers Academy includes up to 20 hours of real-time large and small group instruction and a comprehensive suite of digital workshop materials.

Financial Support for Attendance

Cost should not be a barrier to attendance. Eligible registrants are invited to apply to ASAP's JEDI Fund to cover their registration costs.

Regional Sessions for Climate Service Providers Academy 2023

Engage with instructors and workshop material to share your business needs or connect with other participants to share ideas and foster partnership and collaboration. Each session is designed differently to help you achieve your individual and business goals.

A limited number of spots are available for additional, private consultations with instructors who can provide personalized support in the following areas:

Accessing and using region-specific climate data, models, and historic and future projections.
Identifying, prioritizing, and applying principles of quality climate change adaptation practice.

All Academy participants should plan to attend the first two sessions, the closing session, and as many of the regional sessions as desired. Sessions will be held from 1-3 PM ET. Questions? Contact Mia Dozier at mdozier@adaptpros.org.

Meet the Academy Instructors and Presenters!

Our Instructors and Speakers

Opening Session - October 17

Dr. Julian Reyes

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Julian Reyes is the Assistant Director for Climate Services at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Deputy Director for Services at the U.S. Global Change Research Program. He is on loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture where he served as the National Coordinator for USDA’s Climate Hubs program. From that position, he brings broad experience in co-creating actionable, decision-relevant climate resources with stakeholders and the public to help manage climate risks. Prior, Julian was an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of State in their climate change office. He also spearheaded the development of the AgRisk Viewer, a new platform to provide accessible and discoverable crop insurance loss data. Julian earned both his B.S. and Ph.D. in civil engineering from Washington State University.

Principles of Quality Adaptation Session - October 24

Graham Knibbs

Case Study

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Graham has been engaged in geoscience research and consulting services for over ten years in Canada. While his experience is global, he resides and primarily practices in British Columbia, Canada, where there is no shortage of natural hazards. Drawn to the areas of geomorphology and landslide hazards, Graham focuses his expertise on debris flows as a Geohazard Specialist with Stantec Consulting Ltd. Believing in creating innovative and effective solutions for clients, Graham leverages his experience and aptitude for problem solving, modeling, GIS and expertise regarding geohazards to deliver practical geohazard solutions to Stantec’s global client base.

Dr. Sue Kemball Cook

Case Study

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Dr. Sue Kemball-Cook is a Vice President with WSP and leads the Sustainability, Energy and Climate Change (SECC) Group’s climate risk practice. She is a climate scientist by training and her early career was spent developing climate models and doing climate research. At WSP, Sue supports clients in evaluating and managing their climate risks and mainstreaming climate across their organizations. Her expertise includes climate risk and resilience assessment, analysis and enhancement of climate governance, and development of resilience and low carbon transition plans.

Midwest Session - October 31

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Ariane Laxo

Case Study

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Ariane Laxo, LEED AP ID+C, EDAC, Assoc AIA is Director of Sustainability at HGA, advancing the firm’s work on decarbonization, resilience, and fostering healthy communities. She has been exploring how climate projections can be used to inform architecture and engineering workflows for nearly a decade, including collaborating with climate scientists on how to translate outputs from climate projection models into data formats used by energy modeling tools. Ariane was lead author on Climate Forward? How architects and engineers are(n’t) using climate projections to inform design, which details findings from a research study HGA completed in 2022 with the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership.

Amanda Farris

Presenter

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Amanda Farris is the Associate Director for the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership (MCAP). In this role she helps to coordinate the MCAP program and several ongoing grants, collaborates with regional partners, translates climate data and information to support decision-making, and builds networks of climate adaptation practitioners. Prior to joining the MCAP team, Amanda worked with the Carolinas Integrated Sciences & Assessments (CISA), an applied climate research team at the University of South Carolina Department of Geography for 11 years. A key component of Amanda’s work is bridging the gap between climate science and stakeholder communities through network building. She serves as lead organizer for the Midwest Climate Resilience Conference and also organized the biennial Carolinas Climate Resilience Conference from 2014 to 2021. She is a member of the Program Committee for the National Adaptation Forum and has served as mentor for the American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP) mentorship program for three terms.

Dr. Heidi Roop

Presenter

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Dr. Heidi Roop is the Director of the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership (MCAP) and an Assistant Professor of Climate Science at the University of Minnesota. She also serves as Minnesota’s Extension Specialist for Climate Science and Adaptation. Her research and Extension programs, including MCAP, combine cutting-edge climate science, science communication and the principles of knowledge co-production to increase the use and integration of future climate change information in decision-making at a range of scales—from city and state to national and international levels. By producing actionable, relevant, and user-informed climate science products and tools, Heidi helps diverse stakeholders prepare for, and manage, the risks of a changing climate. Her climate science research has led her around the world where she has participated in research from Greenland and Antarctica to the mountains of Vietnam and New Zealand. In addition to her appointments at the University of Minnesota, she also is an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington.

Dr. Jenna Jorns

Presenter

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Dr. Jenna Jorns (she/her) is the Co-Director for GLISA, NOAA’s Climate Adaptation Partnership (CAP) team for the Great Lakes region. She is based in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability. In this role, she works with academics, practitioners, and communities to advance equitable climate resilience in the Great Lakes. As a climate scientist by training, she enjoys helping GLISA’s partners develop and apply the best available climate science in their decision-making. She has a Ph.D. in Geosciences from Princeton University and a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Long bio: Dr. Jorns is the Co-Director for GLISA at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability. In this role, Dr. Jorns takes on daily administrative and long-term strategic leadership of GLISA to make key decisions and represent GLISA to sponsors, partners, the media, and elected officials. She also recruits new faculty, convenes GLISA’s advisory boards, leads interdisciplinary research proposals and projects, publishes results in scholarly journals, and represents GLISA on the RISA Executive Committee. She also provides day-to-day leadership and administration of GLISA operations to ensure the goals of the 2021-2026 program are being achieved. Dr. Jorns supervises staff and students and coordinates faculty research at GLISA’s four partner institutions. She was previously the Program Manager from 2017-2022. Since joining GLISA in 2017, she was a co-author of the Midwest chapter of the 4th National Climate Assessment and serves as Co-Principal Investigator on two ongoing GLISA research projects focused on stormwater management and remote engagement in the Great Lakes and Gulf of Mexico. She also participated in GLISA’s internal evaluation of its small grants program (Jorns et al. 2021), facilitated the 2021 Great Lakes Climate Modeling Workshop (Briley and Jorns 2021), and contributed to breakthrough research on lake-atmosphere interactions in climate modeling (Notaro et al. 2022).

Teal Harrison

Case Study

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Teal Harrison is a Climate Resilience Specialist with Adaptation International who is specialized in coastal science, flood resilience and community engagement. An advocate for equitable climate change adaptation, she currently works with municipalities and community members in the Gulf Coast Region to assess climate risk and proactively plan for future storms, floods, and coastal hazards. In past roles, Teal has worked in advocacy, outreach, and research capacities on regional flood planning, nature-based solutions to flooding, equitable disaster recovery, nonpoint source pollution, water quality stewardship, and food justice in the Gulf Coast and Great Lakes Regions. Trained in both social and natural sciences, Teal holds a B.A. in Behavioral Biology from Johns Hopkins University and a M.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Michigan.

California and Nevada Session - November 2

Ariel Choinard

Presenter

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Dr. Grace Di Cecco

Presenter

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Kara Odegard

Case Study

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Professor at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez Campus, Dept. of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering. I teach courses in agricultural hydrology, agroclimatology and irrigation. My research interests include measuring and modeling all components of the hydrologic cycle, remote sensing of water and energy balance in the Tropics, and agroclimatology. Some of my water management-related publications and presentations can be found at the following link: click here

South Central Session - November 14

Annie Vest

Case Study

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Annie Vest is the Mitigation and Disaster Planning Lead at Freese and Nichols, and the Vice President of the National Hazard Mitigation Association. She currently serves as a Subject Matter Expert to the Department of Homeland Security CISA, Resilient Investment Planning, and Development Working Group. Annie is the former State Hazard Mitigation Officer (SHMO) for Oklahoma. She has extensive, real-world experience in hazard mitigation, pre and post-disaster, and emergency management. As SHMO, Annie was directly responsible for $130 million in Federal Hazard Mitigation Assistance (HMA) funds and the review and approval of Local Hazard Mitigation Plans. In 2016 she received the FEMA Region VI Regional Administrators Award for streamlining Hazard Mitigation and Hazard Mitigation Planning throughout FEMA Region VI. She has conducted the FEMA G318 Local Hazard Mitigation Planning workshop throughout Oklahoma on several occasions. Annie was a key contributing member of the first formal FEMA Region VI Regional Advisory Council subcommittee for Mitigation Planning. She assisted in developing streamlined planning tools now being used throughout FEMA Region VI. She is a proven leader and is often invited to participate in policy discussions at the national level, specifically in flood buyout policy to practice. Annie assists various clients in achieving community resilience. She holds a bachelor’s in Psychology and Disaster Management and a dual master's degree in Adult and Community Education and Executive Development for the Public Sector.

Dr. Barney Austin

Case Study

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Barney Austin has worked in the field of water resources for more than thirty years. With a Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Engineering and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering, he specializes in water supply planning, hydrology, hydraulics, and environmental flows. He has lived and worked in Canada and England, and has been in the United States for the last 17 years. The former director of the Surface Water Division of the Texas Water Development Board, he was an active participant in the development of state water plans in Texas, Oklahoma and California, and oversaw nine surface water programs. Barney has managed many large projects and diverse groups of people, successfully bridging the gap between technical and non-technical stakeholders as well as the private and public sectors. He now heads up Aqua Strategies Inc. License #100370 (Texas)

Dr. Sharon Hausam

Presenter

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Dr. Sharon Hausam is the South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center’s (SC CASC) Climate Adaptation Planner and Research Scientist. Her professional practice and research focus on climate resilience strategies, climate justice, community-based and collaborative planning, Tribal sovereignty, and the use of both western science and Indigenous knowledges in climate adaptation. Prior to joining the SC CASC, Sharon served as the Planning Program Manager for the Pueblo of Laguna, where she initiated work on climate adaptation planning. She is adjunct faculty in the Community and Regional Planning Department at the University of New Mexico. Sharon holds a Bachelor of Science with a double major in Biology and Art, a Master of Environmental Studies, and a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning. She lives between the Sandia Mountains and the Rio Grande on traditional Southern Tiwa Pueblo land, currently known as Albuquerque, where she enjoys gardening, foraging for wild plants, canning and drying food, walking her dog, and hiking.

Dr. Vincent Brown

Presenter

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Lena Easton-Calabria is a Policy Analyst at the RAND Corporation and Program Manager for the NOAA-funded Mid-Atlantic Climate Adaptation Partnership (formerly RISA) program, MARISA. She has a background in anthropology, climate change, and environmental justice, and is passionate about using research to solve real-world problems. Easton-Calabria was previously a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in the Amazon rainforest, where she conducted research for three years on globalization and climate change in Indigenous communities. Easton-Calabria is a current PhD Candidate at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute and holds a Master of Science in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford and a bachelor’s degree in Medical Anthropology and Global Health from the University of Washington.

Closing Session Panel - November 28

Jim Fox

Panel Moderator

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James (Jim) Fox has over 40 years of experience in helping people understand and make decisions in a complex and changing world. Jim is the past Director of UNC Asheville's NEMAC, where he led the group from 2005 to 2020. He is now a Senior Resilience Associate with Fernleaf. The NEMAC+FernLeaf team is known for its development and ongoing management of the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit in collaboration with NOAA's Climate Program Office. Jim leads the ASAP Private Sector Member-Led Interest Group.

John Phillips

Panelist

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John Phillips has been working in the water industry since 1999 and is currently the Director of Integrated Watershed Management at Parametrix. He has experience in emergency planning, comprehensive planning, long range planning, climate change science, climate adaptation, wet weather issues, green infrastructure, and co-benefit analysis. John has an extensive background in climate adaptation, equity, and social justice and applying climate science to pro-active actions. He has spent many hours working with the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group scoping specific studies to better understand how science impacts urban planning and utility planning. John's work has been featured in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report and the 2014 National Climate Assessment. His current climate work is with municipal government, stormwater utilities, regional transportation projects, and transit facilities.

Dr. Shalina Vajhala

Panelist

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Shalini Vajjhala, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of PRE Collective and the Founder & CEO of re:focus partners. She is a nationally recognized infrastructure and climate resilience expert with nearly two decades of experience designing, funding, and financing community-centered resilient infrastructure solutions. Previously, Shalini served as Special Representative in the Office of Administrator Lisa Jackson at the Environmental Protection Agency. In this position, she led the US-Brazil Joint Initiative on Urban Sustainability (JIUS) announced in March 2011 by Presidents Obama and Rousseff. She also served as Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Office of International & Tribal Affairs at the US EPA and as Deputy Associate Director for Energy and Climate at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. She joined the Obama Administration from the environmental think-tank Resources for the Future, where she was awarded a patent for her climate adaptation mapping work. Shalini received her Ph.D. in Engineering & Public Policy and B.Arch in Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University. She was a visiting associate professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) from 2013-2014, where she designed and taught courses on Case Studies in Sustainable Development. She is currently a Board Member of Smart Growth America and a nonresident senior fellow with The Brookings Institution Metro Program.

Tory Grieves

Panelist

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Tory Grieves is Director, Strategic Initiatives at Sustainable1 where she focuses on product strategy and strategic partnerships. Prior to this role, Tory served as VP, Analytics of The Climate Service (now an S&P Global company), focusing on methodology development for physical climate risk analysis underpinning the Climanomics SaaS platform, and before that, VP of Business Development, helping The Climate Service build its initial customer base as an early-stage startup. Her prior work includes structuring green infrastructure credit markets with NatureVest (the investment unit of The Nature Conservancy); advancing social and environmental outcomes in Nepal through private equity investments while working with Dolma Impact Fund, an impact investment firm based in Kathmandu; and developing projects and grant proposals for biodiversity conservation projects while working with IUCN Nepal through a Princeton in Asia Fellowship. Grieves began her career as an environmental scientist working on urban ecology projects in New York City with the consulting firm, Biohabitats.

Grieves holds MBA and Master of Environmental Management (MEM) degrees from Yale University and graduated with a BA in Environmental Studies from Hamilton College.

Our Partners

California-Nevada Climate Applications Program

Caribbean Climate Action Network

Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast

Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments (NOAA's Great Lakes CAP/RISA Team)

Mid-Atlantic Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments

Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program

The 2023 Private Sector Climate Service Providers Academy was prepared by the American Society of Adaptation Professionals using Federal funds under award NA23OAR4310135 from NOAA Climate Adaptation Partnerships (formerly RISA), U.S. Department of Commerce. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the author(s) and do necessarily reflect the views of the NOAA or the U.S. Department of Commerce.

We’d also like to extend a special thank you to Adaptation International and Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments for their support in designing the Academy.