Introducing Emily Wasley, ASAP’s New Board President

This month we’re celebrating the hope and opportunity that a wave of new leadership brings. We couldn’t be more excited to announce that, effective February 1, Emily Wasley will become the new president of ASAP’s Board of Directors. An active ASAP member since 2012, Emily herself is hardly “new.” But her fresh ideas about how to connect ASAP membership and leadership, attract more funding and partners for ASAP, and cultivate “active hope” certainly are.

A key priority for Emily is leaning into ASAP’s values of democracy and transparency to ensure the work of the Board and the work of ASAP Member Leaders is integrated, complimentary, and accessible to the entire ASAP community. Emily emphasizes that ASAP’s “incredibly supportive, innovative, collaborative, and driven network of practitioners” has a place for everyone, no matter how long you have been in the field or what your needs might include.

“ASAP is a community where I feel most at home. My adaptation career has progressed with the support and engagement of ASAP and I have gained an incredibly strong and supportive network of colleagues, partners, and friends through ASAP.”
— Emily Wasley, ASAP’s New Board President

Emily’s Board service is driven by her desire to give back to this community that has nurtured her professionally and personally, and she’s imbuing that service with innovative ideas for harnessing one of ASAP’s greatest strengths — collaborative, cross-sector partnerships. Specifically, she’s leveraging her experience as a corporate climate resilience leader to bring more businesses to the table to take advantage of “the incredible opportunities for partnerships, co-designed solutions, and innovative finance mechanisms that could arise if we bring together governments, corporations, universities, NGOs, and communities to collaborate and create a shared vision for a more sustainable and resilient future.” Emily also works to advance women’s leadership in the climate space through her service on the Steering Committee of Women in Climate Tech (WiCT), the Women in Resilience webinar series, a passion she’s excited to bridge with her ASAP Board service.

Emily has her sights set on increasing ASAP’s financial stability so we can enhance the adaptive capacity of members and the adaptation field, providing effective and consistent support no matter what the future holds for our profession, climate, or society. Emily secured ASAP’s first Transform-level organizational membership from her employer, WSP USA, in December 2020. In Emily’s words, “if you are an organization – whether public or private – joining as an organizational member is an exciting way to engage in the discussions more deeply and be a part of this incredible movement to enhance our adaptive capacity at a variety of scales from the personal, organizational, community, national, and global.”

Finally, Emily hopes to, “mainstream active hope and personal resilience throughout the organization.”  A co-founder of ASAP’s Personal Resilience Group, Emily notes that our work as adaptation professionals can get, “very raw, hard, and depressing.” In order to sustain this work effectively over the long-term we must, “continue investing in our personal resilience and the resilience of our colleagues, partners, neighbors, friends, and family. This level of support will give us the courage, strength, and drive to continue daring greatly through this turbulent, yet beautiful world.”