Click on a speaker name to read biography.
Matt Chamberlain(November 20, 2019) Matt Chamberlain is a principal and consulting actuary with the Property and
Casualty practice in Milliman's San Francisco office. He joined the firm in 2011.
Mr. Chamberlain’s experience is primarily in personal lines property and casualty
insurance; however, his past experience has included evaluating existing rating
plans and optimizing them subject to business constraints, improving the loss ratio
of underperforming books of business, and evaluating companies' competitive
position. His specialty is pricing for natural catastrophes and in using advanced
analytical techniques for small companies with a limited volume of data.
Prior to joining Milliman, Mr.
Chamberlain was senior actuary at Geovera Holdings, Inc. and he has worked for Unitrin Direct and the
Massachusetts Workers' Compensation Rating & Inspection Bureau. He received both his BS, Physics and
BA, Classics degrees from The Ohio State University. He obtained his MS, Physics degree from Auburn
University in Alabama.
Michael Cohen(November 20, 2019) Michael Cohen is the Senior Vice President of Government Affairs for
RenaissanceRe, a global provider of reinsurance and insurance. Prior to his current
position, he was a director of industry and state relations at Freddie Mac.
He also
served as the Deputy Chief of Staff of the White House Community Empowerment
Board in the Clinton White House, was the White House liaison at the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development and ran the Office of Special Actions for HUD Secretary
Andrew Cuomo.
Mr. Cohen was a legislative assistant in U.S. House of Representatives and has held
various other positions both in and out of government. He grew up in Miami, Florida and earned a B.A.
at Columbia University and a J.D. at Emory University School of Law.
Peter S. Daily(November 20, 2019) Peter S. Dailey, Ph.D., is Vice President of Model Development at Risk
Management Solutions (RMS), currently leading RMS’ global event response
team. At the start of his career, he taught at UCLA before joining Northrup
Grumman (NG) to work on classified projects for the U.S. Department of Defense.
At NG he also led R&D for commercial application including weather forecasting
products developed for The Weather Channel. Dr. Daily transitioned to the
catastrophe modeling field in 2001 where he led the hurricane modeling team at AIR Worldwide before
joining the executive team at Verisk Climate.
In 2014, he founded his private practice - Urban Enterprise
Partners Inc. - a consultancy serving the (re)insurance and capital markets space with predictive analytics.
He joined RMS in 2017. Dr. Daily has over 20 years’ experience developing and innovating models that
measure the risks from tropical cyclones, winter storms, severe thunderstorms, and coastal floods, and
has contributed to research surrounding emerging risks such as wildfire, cyber terrorism and inland
flooding. Dr. Dailey attended the University of Pennsylvania where he obtained two degrees in systems
engineering and applied economics. He earned his Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Atmospheric Science
with a specialty in numerical weather prediction from UCLA.
Peter S. Dailey, Vice President - Model Development
Risk Management Solutions
Ben Diamond(November 20, 2019) State Representative Ben Diamond represents District 68 in the Florida House of
Representatives. He was elected in 2016 and reelected in 2018. In the beginning
of his career, Mr. Diamond clerked for a federal appeals court judge, and
subsequently served as General Counsel for Florida’s Chief Financial Officer and
the Florida Department of Financial Services, where he was responsible for a
diverse array of regulatory responsibilities relating to consumer protection and the investment of state
funds. He currently practices law in downtown St. Petersburg and has been appointed to serve as the
City’s representative on the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority, where he works to improve
transportation and supported the expansion of electric buses and green technologies. In the Florida
House, Mr. Diamond was recently elected by his colleagues to serve as Leader designate for the House
Democratic Caucus. He also serves on the House Appropriations Committee, is the Democratic Ranking
Member on the House Judiciary Committee, serves on the Civil Justice Subcommittee and serves on the
Insurance and Banking Subcommittee. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree from Yale University and his law
degree at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.
Ben Diamond, Florida House of Representatives
68th District
Daniel Dietch(November 20, 2019) Mayor Daniel Dietch has been mayor of Surfside, Florida since 2010. Surfside is a
coastal community in Miami-Dade County, located on a barrier island along the
southeast coast of Florida. Professionally, Mr. Dietch is an environmental consultant
employed by SCS Engineers, an environmental consulting and contracting firm
serving public and private clients. He is also a proud graduate of the inaugural class
of the Good Government Institute and currently serves on the Executive Board of
The CLEO Institute, the Executive Board of the Clean Energy Coast Corridor and the Advisory Board of the
American Flood Coalition. Mr. Dietch has an undergraduate degree from Skidmore College in Geology and
Anthropology, a graduate degree from Cornell University in Environmental Management and a graduate
degree from the University of Miami in Business Administration.
Beth Dwyer(November 20, 2019) Ms. Dwyer was appointed Superintendent of Insurance in January 2016. Prior to
this appointment, she served the Rhode Island Department of Business regulation
for 15 years, holding the titles of General Counsel to the Insurance Division and
later, as Associate Director. Prior to government service, Ms. Dwyer was engaged
in private law practice in California and Rhode Island specializing in litigation and insurance regulation.
She currently serves as Chair of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ (NAIC) Property and
Casualty Insurance Committee; Chair of the Restructuring Mechanisms Working Group; Vice Chair of the
Interstate Product Regulation Compact and the Big Data Working Group. Ms. Dwyer is a member of the
NAIC Executive Committee and the Secretary/Treasurer of the National Insurance Producers Registry
(NIPR). She is a past president of the Rhode Island Women’s Bar Association and served on the Rhode
Island Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Gender. Ms. Dwyer received a J.D. from Pepperdine
University and a B.A. in Political Science and Public Administration from Providence College.
Beth Dwyer, Superintendent of Insurance
Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation
Robert Field(November 20, 2019) Robert Field is a fire scientist and climate modeler at Columbia University and the
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Sciences. His interests range from fire weather
forecasting to the climatic effects of wildfire smoke. He co-chairs the
Interdisciplinary Biomass Burning Initiative under the World Meteorological
Organization and the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Project.
Mr. Field has a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Physics from the University of Toronto.
Robert Field, Associate Research Scientist
Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University
Arlene Fiore(November 20, 2019) Arlene Fiore is a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental
Sciences at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia University.
Ms. Fiore’s research addresses global dimensions to air quality, including how
atmospheric composition and air quality affect and respond to climate change
and variability. As a member of NASA’s Health and Air Quality Applied Sciences
Team (HAQAST), she and her team apply satellite and other Earth science datasets to inform emerging air
quality and health management needs. Her work has advanced understanding of the role of
intercontinental transport in regional air quality and highlighted the potential for reductions in global
methane emissions to improve air quality and lessen climate warming. Ms. Fiore joined Lamont-Doherty
Earth Observatory in 2011 after working as a research physical scientist at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid
Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton NJ. Sh earned her Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard
University in 2003.
Arlene Fiore, Professor Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Michael Gerrard(November 20, 2019) Michael B. Gerrard is Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia
Law School, where he teaches courses on environmental and energy law and
founded and directs the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. He is also a member
and former Chair of the Faculty of Columbia’s Earth Institute. Before joining the
Columbia faculty in January 2009, Mr. Gerrard was partner in charge of the New York
office of the Arnold & Porter law firm; he is now Senior Counsel to the firm.
He
practiced environmental law in New York City full time from 1979 to 2008. His practice involved trying
numerous cases and arguing many appeals in federal and state courts and administrative tribunals;
handling the environmental aspects of numerous transactions and development projects; and providing
regulatory compliance advice to a wide variety of clients in the private and public sectors. He has served
on the executive committees of the boards of the Environmental Law Institute and the American College
of Environmental Lawyers. Mr. Gerrard received his B.A. from Columbia University and his J.D. from NYU
Law School, where he was a Root Tilden Scholar.
Michael Gerrard, Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice
Columbia Law School
Radley Horton(November 20, 2019) Radley Horton is a Lamont Associate Research Professor at Columbia
University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. His research focuses on climate
extremes, tail risks, climate impacts, and adaptation. He was a Convening Lead
Author for the Third National Climate Assessment. Mr. Horton currently CoChairs Columbia’s Adaptation Initiative and is Principal Investigator for the
Columbia University-WWF ADVANCE partnership, and the NOAA-Regional Integrated Sciences and
Assessments-funded Consortium for Climate Risk in the Urban Northeast.
He is also the Columbia
University lead for the Department of Interior-funded Northeast Climate Science Center and is a PI on an
NSF-funded Climate Change Education Partnership Project. Mr. Horton has been a Co-leader in the
development of a global research agenda in support of the United Nations Environmental Program’s
Programme on Vulnerability, Impacts, and Adaptation (PROVIA) initiative. He teaches in Columbia
University’s Sustainable Development department.
Radley Horton, Research Professor
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
John Huff(November 20, 2019) John Huff became President & CEO of ABIR in 2018. In this role, Mr. Huff directs
ABIR’s worldwide public policy initiatives. He has more than 25 years of experience
in the insurance sector, most recently as the 2016 president of the National
Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), the U.S. standard-setting and
regulatory support organization created and governed by the nation’s chief
insurance regulators. Mr. Huff has also served as director of the Missouri
Department of Insurance, a position he held for eight years.
Prior to entering public service, he spent more
than a decade in executive positions with leading global insurers and reinsurers. A former practicing
attorney, Mr. Huff brings to the table a keen understanding of the regulatory, legal, financial and
operational challenges that insurance and reinsurance companies face. He earned his JD from Washington
University School of Law and holds a MBA from St. Louis University and a BSBA from Southeast Missouri
State University.
John Huff, Immediate Past President
National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC)
Darby Jack(November 20, 2019) Darby Jack, PhD, studies environmental health risks in developing countries, the
health impacts of climate change, and the role of the urban environment in
shaping health. He is in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at
Columbia University. For the last several years, his primary focus has been the
health effects of exposure to indoor air pollution from biomass fuels.
With
support from the Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan,
Mr. Jack has helped to develop a Columbia-wide biomass working group, which coordinates and supports
interdisciplinary research on the topic. These collaborations have given rise to current efforts to measure
the health benefits of clean cookstoves in Ghana. In New York, he is collaborating with exposure scientists
to estimate the effects of air pollution exposures on people who commute by bicycle.
Darby Jack, Associate Professor
Environmental Health Sciences, Columbia University
Chia-Ying Lee(November 20, 2019) Ms. Lee is an Assistant Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory, Columbia University. Her work focuses on tropical cyclone (TC) and
climate, and her research topics include developing a statistical-dynamical TC
downscaling system for risk assessment, Madden–Julian oscillation and TC
relationships in the subseasonal to seasonal (S2S) dataset. She has a background
in Atmospheric Science and received her B.S. and M.S. at the National Taiwan University under Professor
Chun-Chieh Wu. In 2007, Ms. Lee attended the Meteorology and Physical Oceanography(MPO) division at
the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) at the University of Miami.
Chia-Ying Lee, Assistant Research Professor
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
RJ Lehmann(November 20, 2019) R.J. Lehmann is senior fellow and director of finance, insurance and trade policy
for the R Street Institute, overseeing the institute’s research into effective and
efficient regulation of financial services and the benefits of the international rulesbased trading system. He previously served as deputy director of the Heartland
Institute’s Center of Finance, Insurance and Real Estate.
Before joining Heartland,
he spent nearly a decade covering the insurance and financial services industries, first as manager of A.M.
Best Co.’s Washington bureau and later as a senior industry editor with SNL Financial (now S&P Global
Market Intelligence). Mr. Lehmann is a three-time award winner from the American Society of Business
Publication Editors and was the youngest-ever winner of a first-place prize from the New Jersey Press
Association. He also is an associate fellow of the John Locke Institute and the James Madison Institute.
RJ Lehmann, Director, Finance, Insurance & Trade Policy
R Street Institute
David I. Maurstad(July 10, 2008) David Maurstad, Assistant Administrator for Mitigation, provides leadership for some of the nation's leading multi-hazard risk reduction programs, which seek to secure the homeland from natural hazards. His areas of oversight include the National Flood Insurance Program, the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program, the National Dam Safety Program and the National Hurricane Program. He works closely with public and private risk managers, as well as leaders in government, industry, research and academia.
Mr. Maurstad was appointed Director of FEMA's Mitigation Division and Federal Insurance Administrator in April 2006 and previously held both positions in an acting role beginning in June 2004. From 2001-2005, he was Regional Director of FEMA's Region VIII and coordinated FEMA's prevention, preparedness, and disaster response and recovery activities in Colorado, Montana, North and South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. Prior to that appointment, Mr. Maurstad was the Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska, a position to which he was elected in 1998. In addition, he previously served as a member of the Nebraska Unicameral Legislature.
Mr. Maurstad has nearly 25 years of experience as an insurance agent in Nebraska, and was mayor of Beatrice, Nebraska. He is the first locally-elected official and insurance agent to head the National Flood Insurance Program.
Mr. Maurstad holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration and an MBA from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
David I. Maurstad, Assistant Administrator for Mitigation
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
and Chief Executive, National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)
Nora Ostrovskaya(November 20, 2019) Ms. Ostrovskaya leads the Strategic Initiatives team at MTA Headquarters. Strategic Initiatives is an internal consulting group with a diverse portfolio of projects that include capital markets-based reinsurance transactions.
Prior
to working at the MTA, Ms. Ostrovskaya worked in public and structured
finance. She has several graduate degrees including an MBA in Finance
from the University of Pennsylvania.
Andrew Revkin(November 20, 2019) Andrew Revkin is the founding director of the new Initiative on Communication
and Sustainability at Columbia University's Earth Institute. Before moving to
Columbia this year, he spent a year as a strategic adviser at the National
Geographic Society, where he helped expand funding, training and support
systems for worldwide environmental journalism.
2018, Mr. Revkin was the senior reporter for climate change at the nonprofit
investigative newsroom ProPublica. That move, in 2018, followed three decades of ground-breaking
journalism, including 14 years at The New York Times as a reporter and he also ran a Dot Earth blog.
From
2010 to 2016, Mr. Revkin was also senior fellow for environmental understanding at Pace University,
where he developed courses in online communication and filmmaking focused on sustainability. He has
written acclaimed books on humanity’s weather and climate learning journey, global warming, the
changing Arctic and the assault on the Amazon rain forest.
Andy Revkin, Founding Director, Initiative on Communication and Sustainability
The Earth Institute, Columbia University
Jessie Ritter(November 20, 2019) As Director of Water Resources and Coastal Policy, Jessie Ritter leads the
development and execution of NWF’s national water resources and coastal policy
priorities. She oversees federal campaigns to protect clean water and wetlands and
increase the resilience of communities and wildlife in the face of climate change
and natural disaster events. Ms. Ritter also works to coordinate and steer NWF’s
federal advocacy work to restore the Gulf of Mexico region, from the Everglades in South Florida, to the
Mississippi River Delta, to Texas estuaries.
She came to the NWF from the U.S. Senate Commerce
Committee, where she covered the oceans and atmosphere portfolio under the leadership of Senators
Rockefeller and Nelson. Ms. Ritter has also worked for several national non-profits on federal and state
policy issues ranging from fisheries management to water resources to coastal community resilience.
Dail Rowe(November 20, 2019) Dr. Dail Rowe is responsible for leading a team of scientists focused on risk
assessment and forecasting. He works closely with clients to manage their
exposure to meteorological risk. Dr. Rowe joined WeatherPredict’s predecessor
organization as a senior research scientist in 1999 and has assumed positions of
increasing responsibility, including serving as an integral part of WeatherPredict’s
atmospheric and oceanic research and development efforts. Dr. Rowe is a principal contributor to many
WeatherPredict initiatives including realtime weather prediction, evaluation and construction of risk
assessment models, and research into climatological control of catastrophic weather.
He has over 20
years’ experience as an oceanographer and meteorologist including several years on the research faculty
at the University of Hawaii, where his research focused on air-sea interactions in the western Pacific
warm-pool that are essential for understanding the ENSO phenomenon. Dr. Rowe holds a B.S. in Physics
from Guilford College and a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of Rhode Island.
Dail Rowe, Senior Scientist & Regional Manager
Weather Predict Consulting
Adam Sobel(November 20, 2019) Dr. Adam Sobel is a professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory and Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He
is an atmospheric scientist who specializes in the dynamics of climate and
weather, particularly in the tropics, on time scales of days to decades. A major
focus of his current research is extreme events - such as hurricanes, tornadoes,
floods, and droughts, and the risks these pose to human society in the present and future climate.
Dr. Sobel leads the Columbia University Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate. Together with
colleagues in both academia and the insurance industry, he has also been developing models to assess
the risk of rare but extremely damaging extreme weather events, particularly tropical cyclones, tornadoes,
and hail. Dr. Sobel holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics and Music from Wesleyan University, and a Ph.D.
in Meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Adam Sobel, Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Applied Physics & Applied Mathematics
Columbia University
Sean Solomon(November 20, 2019) Sean Solomon is the director of Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, the largest
of the Earth Institute’s research centers. Prior to arriving at Columbia in 2012,
Mr. Solomon served for 19 years as Director of the Carnegie Institution’s
Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington, D.C., where his research
focused on planetary geology and geophysics, seismology, marine geophysics,
and geodynamics.
From 1972 to 1992, Mr. Solomon was a member of the faculty
of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. He has led or been involved in oceanographic expeditions as well as spacecraft missions to
the Moon, Venus, Mars, and Mercury. From 1996 to 1998, he was president of the American
Geophysical Union, the world’s largest organization of earth and space scientists.
Sean Solomon, Director
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University
Peter Sousounis(November 20, 2019) Peter Sousounis currently serves as Vice President and Director of Climate
Change Research at AIR-Worldwide and has been with the company for nearly
14 years. His responsibilities include ensuring that current and future
catastrophe model development at AIR accounts for climate change, identifying
products and tools to help clients address their climate change concerns,
assisting with global resiliency projects, and providing thought leadership in
various forms of oral and written communication.
Previously at AIR, Mr. Sousounis was Director of
Meteorology and responsible for overseeing all global atmospheric model development including
hurricanes, extratropical cyclones, and severe thunderstorms. Prior to joining AIR, he was a Professor of
Meteorology at the University of Michigan where he was also a Principal Investigator for the First US
Climate Change Impacts Assessment. Mr. Sousounis received his graduate degrees in Meteorology from
MIT and Penn State.
Craig Tillman(November 20, 2019) Craig Tillman is President of WeatherPredict Consulting Inc., a U.S.-based
RenaissanceRe affiliate that provides intelligence on natural perils. In his current
role, he directs a team of advanced scientists with specialties in oceanography,
meteorology, wind engineering, structural engineering, seismic risk and computer
simulation. Mr. Tillman also serves as President and Director of RenaissanceRe Risk
Sciences Foundation Inc., a non-profit foundation that supports advanced scientific research in natural
catastrophes, the development of risk mitigation techniques to safeguard communities, efforts that
reduce the economic turmoil following disasters, and organizations that preserve coastal habitats. He
currently serves as an Executive Director for the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS).
Mr. Tillman holds Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Mathematics, as well as the Associate in Reinsurance
(ARe) and Risk Management (ARM) designations. He is a longstanding member of the Earthquake
Engineering Research Institute.
Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh(November 20, 2019) Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh is the Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor of
Real Estate and Professor of Finance at Columbia University’s Graduate School of
Business, which he joined in July 2018. He started his career at New York
University’s Stern School of Business where he climbed from an Assistant
Professor of Finance to the David S. Loeb Professor of Finance between 2003 and
2018. He was also the inaugural Director of the Center from Real Estate Finance
Research from 2012 to 2018.
His research lies in the intersection of housing, asset pricing, and
macroeconomics. In this area, Professor Van Nieuwerburgh has also worked on regional housing prices,
households’ mortgage choice, commercial real estate price formation, the impact of foreign buyers on
the housing market and mortgage market design. He served as a board member of the American Real
Estate and Urban Economics Association from 2015 to 2018. He is a Faculty Research Associate at the
National Bureau of Economic Research and at the Center for European Policy Research. Professor Van
Nieuwerburgh has a Ph.D in Economics from Stanford University.
Stephen Weinstein(November 20, 2019)Stephen H. Weinstein serves as RenaissanceRe’s chief legal officer, with
responsibility for legal, regulatory, government affairs and compliance matters on a
global basis. He has served as RenaissanceRe’s Group General Counsel and Corporate
Secretary since joining the Company in 2002, as Chief Compliance Officer since 2004,
and as Senior Vice President since 2005. He has been a member of the company’s Executive Committee
since March 2006. Mr. Weinstein also serves as Chairman of RenaissanceRe’s Risk Sciences Foundation.
Prior to joining RenaissanceRe, he specialized in corporate law as an attorney at Willkie Farr & Gallagher
LLP, a leading international law firm. A frequent speaker on legal and regulatory matters, Mr. Weinstein
serves on the boards of several industry groups and is a Member of the American Bar Association, the
New York State Bar Association and the District of Columbia Bar Association. He is a graduate of Columbia
College and Harvard Law School.
Eric Wilson(November 20, 2019) Eric Wilson is a Deputy Director with the Mayor’s Office of Resiliency (MOR), where
he manages climate adaptation programs in land use and buildings. He oversees a
team of architects, urban planners and policy experts working to identify fiscally
responsible and socially equitable approaches to climate challenges facing New
York City’s building stock and neighborhoods. The MOR leads New York City’s
efforts to ensure all residents thrive in the face of the multiple and compound
impacts of climate change today and into the future through science-based analysis, policy development,
capacity building, and robust engagement.
Eric Wilson, Deputy Director, Land Use and Buildings
NYC Mayor's Office of Resiliency (MOR)
Roy Wright(October 24, 2018) Roy Wright joined IBHS in 2018 with more than 20 years of experience in insurance, risk management, mitigation, and resilience planning. Roy leads a team of scientists and risk communicators who deliver strategies to build safer and stronger homes and businesses. IBHS' real-world impact enables the insurance industry and affected property owners to prevent avoidable losses. Roy joined IBHS from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) where he served as the Chief Executive of the National Flood Insurance Program, led the agency's Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration, and directed the resilience programs addressing earthquake, fire, flood, and wind risks.
Prior to joining FEMA in 2007, Roy worked in public and private sector roles with Coray Gurnitz Strategy Consulting and the U.S. Department of the Interior. A native of California, Roy earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Azusa Pacific University and a Master of Public Administration from The George Washington University.
Roy Wright, President & CEO
Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS)