Joyce Coffee
Joyce Coffee, LEED AP, is founder and President of Climate Resilience Consulting, a certified WBE that works with clients to create practical strategies that enhance markets and communities through adaptation to climate change. Ms. Coffee is a resilience pioneer, having worked for over 200 clients to create and implement climate-related strategies, build partnerships and direct collaborative implementation of complex initiatives. She is an appointed director or chair of over 20 international or national nonprofit boards and initiatives related to resilience and social equity including the Anthropocene Alliance. She is the primary author of over two dozen resilience-related reports. She has a masters from MIT and is an appointee to their Visiting Committee, advising the Board of Trustees. She has 25 years of experience in every major sector including leadership roles in city government, and the private, nonprofit, philanthropic and academic sectors.
As president, Ms. Coffee has created resilience strategies for multiple cities and companies. She led the development of the world’s first set of climate resilience principles for the financial services industry, directed the National Equitable Climate Resilience project and co-authored the national report on the state of the climate adaptation field as well as a national toolkit to increase the resilience project pipeline. She has trained hundreds of local officials and other practitioners in resilience finance.
Joyce’s career started working on private sector projects in Southeast Asia for USAID’s US-Asia Environmental Partnership and the World Bank and proceeded with implementing water security projects for MWH, a global engineering company; creating community sustainability projects for a niche architecture and urban design firm, Farr Associates; and pioneering public private partnerships, adaptation planning, interdepartmental coordination and climate performance measurement as lead of Chicago’s Climate Action Plan. She created corporate social responsibility plans and reports for Fortune 500 companies as Vice President at Edelman and ran a preeminent global adaptation nonprofit the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative, ND-GAIN, establishing the fundamentals of climate resilience measurement.
Joyce is an Affiliate Global Futures Scholar at the Global Futures Laboratory and advises various high level resilience groups, including the Fifth National Climate Assessment, The Climate Bond Initiative's Adaptation and Resilience Expert Group, Global Adaptation and Resilience Investment work group, Anthropocene Alliance, The Climate Service, US Green Building Council's Illinois chapter and UNDRR ARISE.
She received a B.S. in biology, environmental studies and Asian studies from Tufts University and a Masters in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a resilience field thought leader. Connect with her on LinkedIN.
Check out this March 2024 podcast about Joyce’s inspiration for Climate Resilience Consulting.
Robert Macnee
Robert Macnee, Ph.D., is Deputy Director of Resilience Services at Climate Resilience Consulting. He is a highly trained climate impact expert, with a Ph.D in Environmental Management, focused on climate change impacts on health and communities and over 6 years of experience in economic development and equitably building resilience in communities.
Robert is an expert in developing resources to support institutions and governments to identify hotspots of climate vulnerability and exposure and make informed decisions about how to reduce climate risk fairly and effectively. He has published several academic papers in this field.
Having worked with public, private, and academic organizations globally, including the World Bank, UK government, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Climate Center, and multiple city governments, Robert brings a global perspective to local climate impact and resilience work. He advises public and private sector clients on all aspects of project implementation, from transformation and risk management to procurement and workforce development to financing and partnering.
In his previous role at global consultancy Steer’s startup economic development practice, Robert was responsible for leading a large and diverse portfolio of projects that supported cities and regions to grow sustainably and deliver prosperity to communities. He applied his climate resilience expertise to economic development challenges, creating practical and innovative solutions for clients. His work spanned capacity building, strategy development, impact assessment, and monitoring and evaluation for local and national governments and global organizations.
At Climate Resilience Consulting, Robert brings this knowledge and experience to clients through stakeholder and community engagement, providing training, supporting partnership building, and developing resilience strategies. His work is focused on helping communities, governments, and corporations to avoid, prepare for and resist the global and local impacts of climate change. Connect with him on LinkedIN.