Climate resilience is often narrowly framed around avoiding the worst harms of climate change. In this talk, Shalini will offer a broader perspective on how designing for resilience can help expand our ambitions for our public infrastructure systems — creating beautiful spaces that generate multiple social, economic, and ecosystem benefits and protect against that ‘once in a thousand years’ event. She will highlight examples of projects from across the US and show how public infrastructure design, planning, and funding processes can be adapted to serve communities’ deepest needs. She will also share how her early architecture training has shaped and carried through her career in public policy, project finance, and community engagement.
About Shalini Vajjhala
Shalini Vajjhala, PhD is the Executive Director of PRE Collective and a nationally recognized infrastructure and climate resilience expert with 20 years of experience designing, funding, and financing community-centered resilient infrastructure solutions. Over the last decade, she founded and led the design firm re:focus partners and co-founded The Atlas, an online platform for local government collaboration and innovation.
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 B.Arch in Architecture and PhD in Engineering & Public Policy 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 International Environmental Diplomacy and Case Studies in Sustainable Development. She is currently a Board Member of Smart Growth America and a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Metro Program.
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