Rebecca is the Deputy Director of WRI’s Climate Resilient Development Practice. She focuses on governance issues related to climate resilience, including the transparency, equity and inclusivity of adaptation planning and implementation processes. Her work encompasses climate finance, developing methods and tools for tracking adaptation at scale, and making adaptation interventions more transformational.
Rebecca has worked on climate change issues for much of her career, in academic, non-profit and federal government roles. While at the University of Arizona, she conducted research on the sensitivity of water supply and demand to climate variability, the responsiveness of water policies to climate change, and how to make climate information more useful for diverse user groups. She studied the intersection of land use planning and climate change in the Western U.S. while with the Sonoran Institute, and worked with local governments to understand and meet their information needs for adaptation planning with ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability - USA. Prior to joining WRI, she was a Foreign Service Environment Officer with USAID. She was posted in Indonesia, Uganda and the Philippines, and worked on clean energy, biodiversity conservation, water and sanitation, and forestry issues, in addition to climate resilience.
Rebecca earned a Master’s degree and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Her dissertation explored the globalization of the table grape industry of Sonora, Mexico. She completed a postdoc in climate science communications with the NOAA-funded Climate Assessment for the Southwest in Tucson. Previously, she earned BA’s in journalism and interdisciplinary studies, also from the University of Arizona.
