Kathy Baughman-McLeod

Director, Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center; Senior VP, Atlantic Council

Kathy Baughman McLeod is the director of the Adrienne Arsht–Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center at the Atlantic Council. She leads creation and execution of the Center’s strategy to achieve its goal of reaching one billion people worldwide with resilience solutions to the challenges of climate change, migration, and security by 2030. She leverages the significant global network, policy expertise, and intellectual capital of the Atlantic Council with strategic partnerships to deliver innovative on-the-ground solutions.  

 

Baughman McLeod is the former senior vice president, Global Environmental & Social Risk, for Bank of America. In this role, she led the bank’s environmental and social risk policy work including climate risk disclosure efforts across the enterprise, in select lines of business and throughout four global regions. She also helped use the bank’s global reach to advance low carbon and climate resilient investments toward reaching the bank’s commitment of deploying $125 billion in capital by 2025.

 

In her prior role as managing director, Climate Risk & Resilience for the Nature Conservancy, Baughman McLeod led a global team of fifty policy experts, scientists, and financial specialists focused on using natural infrastructure to reduce storm and flood risk throughout Latin America, Australia, Asia, the US, and the Caribbean. She also launched the organization’s insurance initiative that creates market-based products that protect nature and coastal economies, as well as the Conservancy’s humanitarian initiative focused on climate disaster risk reduction called “Nature Protects People.”

Recordings

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Wildfire smoke clouds out the New York City skyline
Podcast

This Year in Climate: 2023

December 15, 2023
It’s been a year of weather extremes — again. But there’s also been cause for renewed hope about our climate future. 
This year, the 28th...
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Podcast

2021: This Year in Climate

December 17, 2021
From extreme weather events to COP26 in Glasgow to the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure deal, 2021 has been a banner year. In this special...
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Podcast

Extreme Heat: The Silent Killer

June 25, 2021
Last week’s heat wave across the western United States busted more records – a trend that doesn’t seem to be going away.  Despite the...