I have been working in the arena of environmental assessment and management for over two decades, in both academic and non-profit settings. Since 2000, my professional work has focused on the issue of climate change, particularly helping stakeholders understand the implications of climate change and appropriate approaches to managing risk.I am currently a senior policy researcher at RAND where I am also the director of the Community Health and Environmental Policy program, director of the RAND Center for Climate and Energy Futures, and a professor at Pardee RAND Graduate School. My recent research efforts include advancing understanding of the implications of climate change and disasters on the delivery of infrastructure services; applying strategic foresight for analyzing and communicating the environmental justice dimensions of climate change; mapping the environmental justice dimensions of climate risk; scenario analysis for low-carbon technology pathways; and analysis of disaster recovery options and their implementation in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.From 2021 to 2023 I took a leave of absence from RAND to serve as the assistant director for Climate Services and Adaptation in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Previously, I held research positions with the Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the CSIRO's Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.In 2015, I received the American Geophysical Union’s Falkenberg Award, and from 2016 to 2017 I was one of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's inaugural Leshner Leadership Fellows. I have contributed to national and international scientific assessments including the U.S. National Climate Assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's fifth and sixth Assessment Reports, the U.S. Global Change Research Program's second State of the Carbon Cycle Report, and the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program’s Adaptation Actions for a Changing Arctic.I received a Ph.D. in environmental biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a B.S. in biology from the College of William & Mary.