Insurance for Nature and Nature for Insurance

Prior to joining Marsh McLennan, Francis Bouchard spent 20+ years in a variety of external facing roles with Zurich Insurance Group, most recently as the Group Head of Public Affairs & Sustainability, where he focused on aligning the Group’s government affairs, sustainability and Foundation activities around impactful public affairs and social impact campaigns.   

In addition, he was appointed as a 2024 Climate Leader in Residence at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, and serves on APCO Worldwide’s International Advisory Council. He also sits on the Board of Directors for the national resilience non-profit SBP and the climate-focused insurtech incubator InnSure, as well as Advisory Boards of the Syracuse University Dynamic Sustainability Lab, Climate Resilience for All and the IN-CORE Project.  He is a graduate of Syracuse University and the George Mason School of Law. 

Dr. Bridges’ research and teaching are focused at the intersection of natural and engineered systems.  Before joining UGA in 2023, Todd was a scientist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for 30 years, where for 17 years he served as the Senior Research Scientist (ST) for Environmental Science for the U.S. Army and USACE.  Over his career, Dr. Bridges has led >$250 million in research projects and programs and in 2010 founded the Corps’ Engineering With Nature® program.   

Talley Burley is the Manager, Climate Risk & Insurance at Environmental Defense Fund. Her experience focuses on disaster resilience, housing resilience and financial resilience policy, to ensure people have access to affordable financial resources that support sustainable and resilient outcomes. Prior to joining EDF she worked for New York City government in the Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice (MOCEJ) and the NYC Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations (HRO). She holds a B.A. in Political Science from American University and a Master’s in Urban Planning from New York University.

Renee Collini, Ph.D., Community Resilience Center at The Water Institute, brings years of experience in providing tools and support to federal, state, and local entities pursuing adaptation and resilience strategies.

As director of the Community Resilience Center, Renee draws from on-the-ground experience working in underserved communities and navigating federal, state, and local governmental processes and systems to help support effective and equitable climate resilience planning and action in communities across the Gulf Coast.

Prior to joining The Water Institute, Renee served as a coastal climate resilience specialist with Mississippi State University and Sea Grant in the northern Gulf of Mexico for almost a decade, facilitating the flow of information between researchers and decision-makers to improve science application. As the lead of the Program for Local Adaptation to Climate Effects: Sea-Level Rise, she integrated a multi-state network of stakeholders, researchers, NGOs, and state and federal agencies to build tools, programs, and projects to address gaps in sea-level rise observing, research, and decision-making. She has collaborated on projects and efforts that have improved coastal community and environmental resilience and has led development of tools and programing that have been applied throughout the Gulf and across the United States. Collini is a recognized leader in resilience across the Gulf of Mexico and is serving as an author on the Fifth National Climate Assessment Coastal Effects Chapter.

Samantha Cook, focuses on advancing finance and policy to address critical global challenges across climate, nature, economic development, and human well-being, she leverages her extensive market insights to drive innovative finance and public policy solutions. With two decades of experience Samantha has substantial experience in driving change both locally and globally, and possesses deep technical expertise in data, analytics, scenario analysis, economics, and policy. She has been pivotal in some of the most innovative disaster risk finance and insurance solutions for vulnerable communities and sovereign catastrophe risk pools including the issuance of several catastrophe bonds and the establishment the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Insurance Company. 

Beth Dwyer was appointed Superintendent of Insurance on Jan. 11, 2016, and named Director of Business Regulation in May 2023. Prior to this appointment, she had been employed by the Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation for 15 years, first as general counsel to the Insurance Division and later as associate director. Prior to government service, Director Dwyer was engaged in private law practice in California and Rhode Island specializing in litigation and insurance regulation. 
 

Director Dwyer is a member of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and is the current Vice President of the organization. She has served as chair of the NAIC Property & Casualty (C), Financial Condition (E) and Financial Regulation Standards and Accreditation (F) Committees as well as numerous task forces and working groups. She has served on the Board of Directors of National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR) and as an Officer of the Interstate Insurance Product Regulation Commissioner (IIPRC). She is the NAIC representative to the Financial Stability Oversight Counsel (FSOC). She is also a member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) as well as a member of a number of IAIS Task Forces. She is a member of the Rhode Island Artificial Intelligence Task Force (AITF) Government Fact Finding Team (FFT).

Deborah Halberstadt is the Special Advisor to the Commissioner on Biodiversity and Inclusive insurance at the California Department of Insurance. In this role, she advises the Commissioner on the development and implementation of strategic initiatives associated with protecting and restoring biodiversity, and promoting social and environmental justice in the context of insurance regulation. Deborah guides innovation in insurance in order to mainstream biodiversity and ecosystem services into decision-making, while at the same time redressing social inequities.  Deborah is a visionary and persuasive leader and an accomplished attorney. She has worked at the forefront of climate law and policy in California in her roles as Senior Climate Policy Advisor with the Department of Insurance, Deputy Secretary for Coastal and Ocean Policy with the California Natural Resources Agency, Executive Director of the California Ocean Protection Council, Deputy Attorney General with the Environment and Land Law sections of the California Department of Justice, and Federal Legislative Liaison in the Office of the Governor. She clerked for the Alaska Supreme Court and was cross-designated as a Special Assistant United States Attorney.

Alice C. Hill is an expert on building resilience to catastrophic risks. She previously served as Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and Senior Director for Resilience Policy on the National Security Council staff where she led the development of national policy, including executive orders related to natural disasters, national security, and climate change. Prior to this, Hill served as senior counselor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). At DHS, she led the formulation of the department’s first-ever climate adaptation plan and the development of strategic plans regarding catastrophic biological and chemical threats, including pandemics. Hill currently serves as the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council on Foreign Relations and was a Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. She is the author of The Fight for Climate After COVID-19 and co-author of Building a Resilient Tomorrow. She currently serves on the boards of the Environmental Defense Fund and Munich Re Group’s U.S.-based companies. In 2020, Yale University and the Op-Ed Project awarded her the Public Voices Fellowship on the Climate Crisis. Earlier in her career, Hill was a supervising judge on both the Los Angeles Municipal and Superior Courts as well as a federal prosecutor and chief of the white-collar crime unit at the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, California. 

Dave Jones is Director of the Climate Risk Initiative at UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE).  He was Senior Director for Environmental Risk at The Nature Conservancy from January 2019 – June 2021 and a Distinguished Fellow with the ClimateWorks Foundation.  Jones was California’s Insurance Commissioner from 2011 through 2018, where he pioneered climate risk regulatory best practices. Jones has degrees from DePauw University (B.A.) and Harvard University (JD/MPP).

Megan Kelso is a conservation scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her background is in coastal wetland ecology and human well-being impacts of conservation and development projects. Megan enjoys working collaboratively across the environment, health, and development sectors to produce research that informs effective conservation and improves the wellbeing of local communities. At UC Santa Cruz, she co-leads a workforce training effort on coastal resilience and collaborations with the insurance industry to envision ways to better integrate nature into risk models, insurance coverages, and financial tools. Before coming to UC Santa Cruz, Megan was a NatureNet Science Fellow at UCLA and The Nature Conservancy, studying the effectiveness of integrated conservation and development approaches. Megan did her PhD at University of California, Davis, where she studied tradeoffs and synergies between wetland management goals such as carbon storage, invasive plant eradication, and mitigation of nutrient pollution mitigation in California salt marshes. Before graduate school, she led community-based wetland restoration projects for four years in San Francisco Bay and Point Reyes National Seashore.

Dr. Carolyn Kousky is founder of Insurance for Good, Associate Vice President for Economics and Policy at Environmental Defense Fund, and author of Understanding Disaster Insurance: New Tools for a More Resilient Future and an editor of A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation. She is a member of the Federal Advisory Committee on Insurance at the U.S. Department of Treasury, a member of the High-Level Advisory Board on the Financial Management of Catastrophic Risks at the OECD, and the vice-chair of the California Climate Insurance Working Group. She has published numerous articles, reports, and book chapters on the economics and policy of climate risk and disaster finance and she is routinely cited in media outlets. She was previously Executive Director at the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Kousky has a BS in Earth Systems from Stanford University and a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University.

Gabe Martinez is ARMS Specialist at the Land Trust Alliance. Gabe joined the Land Trust Alliance in January 2022 and has successfully supported land trusts in upholding lasting perpetual conservation through the management of Terrafirma operations and claims and serving as a service-oriented resource to land trusts navigating the wide array of obstacles they face. He assists in developing, coordinating and implementing educational resources and practices, with a specialized focus on stewardship, risk management, land and climate, internal diversity, equity, and inclusion and external community-centered conservation.

Ben McNeil has spent his career focusing on public sector disaster resilience and risk management. He currently works for Swiss Re's Public Sector Solutions team helping municipalities in North America define, develop and manage their risk transfer strategies. Previously, he worked for the City of Boston for nine years, serving most recently as the City's Risk Finance Manager. Ben received an MBA from Boston University's Questrom School of Business, and also holds an MS in Disaster Resilience from Tulane University in New Orleans, LA and a BA from Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA. Ben also serves as a Petty Officer Second Class the US Coast Guard Reserves out of Station Boston.