Kathy Baughman McLeod is a global leader in climate adaptation and resilience known for tangible, innovative solutions to help protect people and communities from the impacts of climate change. She is the founding and former Director of the Arsht-Rock Resilience Center - built to reach one billion people worldwide with climate-resilience solutions by 2030, with a special focus on society’s most vulnerable. She launched the Center’s extreme heat work that is delivering impact across early-warning, policy, finance, and on-the-ground solutions, including the appointment of chief heat officers in cities around the world. Additionally, she spearheaded the global push to name and categorize heat waves to save lives and build a new and necessary culture of awareness and preparation and launched the first “extreme heat micro insurance” for thousands of poor, heat-exposed women workers in India. Under Kathy’s leadership, Arsht-Rock also launched the United Nations’ “Race to Resilience” campaign and Resilience Hub at COPs 26, 27, and 28.
Baughman McLeod was Bank of America’s Global Executive for Environmental and Social Risk, the Global Managing Director for Climate Risk and Resilience at The Nature Conservancy, and Deputy Chief of Staff to Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, while also serving as on the Florida Energy & Climate Commission. She is a member of FEMA’s National Advisory Council as the agency’s first climate specialist, served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Commission on “BiodiverCities by 2030,” and is a member of the Operating Committee of the Insurance Development Forum. She is the recipient of the Fuqua School of Business 2021 “Leader of Consequence” award and a Policy Fellow of the French Foreign Ministry, She holds an MBA from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and an MS in Geography from Florida State University.