Joyce Coffee

President & Founder, Climate Resilience Consulting

Joyce Coffee is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in climate adaptation and resilience known for shaping the field long before it became mainstream.

For more than two decades, Joyce has helped move climate resilience from the margins to the core of public policy, finance, public health, and community development. She is the founder and president of Climate Resilience Consulting (CRC) the first consultancy in the U.S. focused exclusively on operationalizing climate resilience, embedding adaptation into strategy, finance, measurement, and community solutions.

Joyce has led or conceived many firsts in climate resilience practice:

·       Pioneer of adaptation measurement, leading the creation of the Global Adaptation Index (ND-GAIN), the world’s first system for comparing climate readiness and vulnerability across countries and urban areas, as well as the world’s first Urban Adaptation Assessment.

·       Architect of the nation’s first municipal climate adaptation strategy, embedded within the Chicago Climate Action Plan, helping cities confront both emissions and the climate impacts already underway.

·       Creator of the first biennial U.S. Adaptation Stocktake, documenting progress, gaps, and emerging priorities in climate resilience for the philanthropic and practitioner communities for nearly a decade.

·       Lead architect of the world’s first Climate Resilience Principles for Bonds, establishing global standards now guiding billions of dollars in resilient infrastructure investment.

·       Early champion of resilience finance, authoring Money for Resilient Infrastructure and helping shift resilience from a “cost” to an investable opportunity.

·       Originated the nation’s first Equitable Resilience Builder, the first federally supported framework to embed equity into how communities plan, fund, and implement climate resilience.

·       Author and long-time voice of the field, writing more than 200 essays and blogs on climate adaptation over 15+ years, many introducing concepts now widely discussed as “new.”

·       Launched the world’s first Corporate Adaptation Prize and Corporate Adaptation Survey

·       Author of the world’s first climate resilience guidebook for small businesses, The Resilience Advantage, published in English and Spanish, because Main Street deserves the same tools as Wall Street.

·       Early integrator of public health, affordable housing and climate resilience, connecting extreme heat, flooding, and disaster risk to health outcomes and affordable housing safety, security and stability well before these linkages became standard practice.

Joyce is an Aspen Institute Socrates Fellow, a Chicago Council on Global Affairs Emerging Leader, a Crain’s Notable Leader in Sustainability, and a founding board member of multiple international nonprofit organizations. Over her career, she has served on or advised more than 20 boards and global initiatives, shaping resilience practice across sectors and geographies.

Today, Joyce continues to push the field forward, working to save lives and improve livelihoods in the face of climate disruption through leading CRC’s work with communities, governments, and institutions while launching RIA, a next-generation resilience solutions platform designed for small and mid-sized communities often left behind in climate conversations.

She received a B.S. in biology, environmental studies and Asian studies from Tufts University and a Master’s in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Connect with her on LinkedIn.