Innovations in
Climate Resilience

Senior Director Sarah Ladislaw leads the U.S. National Security Council’s (NSC) Climate and Energy Directorate, responsible for coordinating national security policy on issues including the climate crisis, energy security, stability and reliability, and strengthening environmental sustainability. Sarah previously was a Managing Director at RMI (Rocky Mountain Institute), where she led the US Program. She also worked on other global initiatives including the Mission Possible Partnership to reduce industrial-sector emissions and supports the development of green banks.

Honorable Sharon E. Burke is the President of Ecospherics, a research and consulting firm that focuses on climate change, energy, critical minerals, and food security. She is also the Co-Founder with Dr. Rod Schoonover of the Ecosecurity Council, a non-profit organization dedicated to policy solutions for ecosphere security. Throughout her career, Burke has worked to balance national security and environmental sustainability, with a focus on ideas that scale through public policy.

Mr. Kidd provides policy and governance for programs and activities that enable resilience and cyber-secure energy for weapon systems and installations. This includes budgetary, policy, and management oversight of programs related to climate change, compliance with environmental laws, prevention of pollution, management of natural and cultural resources, and cleanup of contaminated sites, as well as energy resilience, risk, and performance.

Alice Hill is the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her work at CFR focuses on the risks, consequences, and responses associated with climate change. Hill previously served as special assistant to President Barack Obama and senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff where she led the development of national policy to build resilience to catastrophic risks, including climate change and biological threats.

Serving as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Electricity (OE) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Ms. Patricia A. Hoffman also served as Acting Under Secretary for Science and Energy from January 2017 until November 2017 when the U.S. Senate confirmed Mark Menezes as Under Secretary of Energy. Ms. Hoffman served as Acting Assistant Secretary for OE from January 2017 until October 2017 when the OE Assistant Secretary was confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Dr. Eric Hoek is a professor in the Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a faculty scientist in the Energy Storage & Distributed Resources Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and also the director of UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge.

Alice Caponiti serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Reactor Fleet and Advanced Reactor Deployment in the Office of Nuclear Energy. She leads a diverse portfolio of research, development and demonstration programs focused on the technical and economic sustainability of the existing U.S. fleet of commercial reactors and the development and deployment of innovative advanced reactors. Ms. Caponiti is managing a new cost-shared program with industry to demonstrate multiple advanced reactor designs that offer expanded market opportunities for clean energy.

Kel Markert is a Cloud Geographer at Google. His work focuses on enabling users to leverage cloud computing for sustainability solutions and geospatial analyses. He is an expert in Google Earth Engine as well as geospatial processing using cloud technology. Prior to Google, Kel was a research scientist at the NASA SERVIR Science Coordination Office based in Huntsville, AL, USA supporting international organizations in leveraging satellite data and geospatial technology to address climate challenges, particularly for water resources.