Extreme heat is the number one weather related killer in the United States. With temperatures breaking new records this summer, the country and the world are facing a sizzling hot present and future that is guaranteed under all climate scenarios. This reality demands that innovators, investors, and experts from the medical community converge to envision the future of heat tech and the innovations needed to stave off the worst public health impacts from extreme heat. The Extreme Heat & Health Innovation event, co-hosted by Tailwind Climate, CHILL, the University of Colorado’s Climate and Health Program, and La Isla Network during NYC Climate Week, is an event featuring expert sessions that will unearth and share insights into the demand for new innovation to address extreme heat. 

This event has reached registration capacity.

Event Need-to-Know

When: September 26th, 9am – 11:30am
Where: Brooklyn, NY (Jay St-MetroTech). Details provided upon registration.

Agenda 

9am – 9:05am – Welcome
9:05am – 9:10am – Opening Remarks
9:10am – 9:30am – Keynote: Adapting our Healthcare System
9:30am – 10:15am – Panel 1: Demand for Innovation
10:20am – 11:05am – Panel 2: Supply Side Innovation
11:10am – 11:40am –  Networking

Opening Remarks

Kathy Baughman MacLeod, CEO of Climate Resilience for All, will share opening thoughts about the human, social and economic impacts of heat, drawing from her organization’s groundbreaking work to protect the health and livelihoods of women and vulnerable communities from extreme heat.

Keynote: Adapting our Healthcare System

Our keynote will feature climate and health expert Dr. Jay Lemery (Climate & Health Foundation Endowed Chair in Climate Medicine Professor of Emergency Medicine University of Colorado School of Medicine). Dr. Lemery will provide opening remarks on the state of climate resilience in the healthcare field, measures that must be taken to adapt to extreme heat and other climate hazards, and where policy and regulation are and will play a role in the climate resilience of our healthcare system.

Panel 1: Demand for innovation

As our dwellings and cities warm and people face ever increasing temperatures, the need for adequate and equitable cooling solutions are crucial. Certain groups such as young children and the elderly are most vulnerable to dehydration and heat stroke. Medications for a range of conditions from cardiovascular to psychiatric can often exacerbate the risk of heat related illness and the literature is pointing to the needs of changing medication prescription in relation to heat. Workers across a range of industries but particularly those who work outside are at high risk for heat-illness and employers are starting to be engaged in deploying preventative measures. This panel explores the demand for heat tech solutions by engaging medical and business experts on the front lines of this crisis. 

• Moderator: Chethan Sarabu, Director of Clinical Innovation at Cornell Tech; Co-Founder at Climate Health Innovation & Learning Lab (CHILL)
• Dr. Arnab Ghosh, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine and NIH Climate and Health Scholar
• Monika Serrano, Resilience Program Manager at Turner Construction
• Jane Gilbert, Chief Heat Officer, Miami Dade County 

Panel 2: Supply Side Innovation

As extreme heat events increase, the innovation and investment community are beginning to respond. This panel will focus on the startups and solution providers already designing, scaling, and implementing tech driven solutions to extreme heat. The conversation will focus on how entrepreneurs and innovators a) identified the need for their solution(s), b) tested that need, and c) how they are scaling their initiatives and companies to ensure their solutions are widely available and making an impact. 

• Moderator: Katie MacDonald, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Tailwind
• Jason Glaser, CEO at La Isla Network
• Ibbi Almufti, Risk+ Resilience Leader, Arup and CEO at Class 3 Technologies
• Nakita Devlin, CEO at Ric
• Matt Anderson, CEO at Cryogenx

About the Organizers

Tailwind is an advisory and investment firm focused on accelerating the deployment of the next generation of climate adaptation solutions. 

CHILL is a hub of clinicians and technologists catalyzing innovations and emerging markets for a climate-adaptive, resilient, and sustainable healthcare system. We’re coming together for NYC Climate Week to highlight the public health crisis and innovation opportunity posed by extreme heat. 

University of Colorado’s Climate and Health Program’s mission is to further understand the impacts of climate change on human health and to be credible advocates of smart policy that addresses the climate crisis and advances human dignity in the same effort. We aspire to be the home of climate medicine.

La Isla Network conducts independent scientific investigations in collaboration with leading research institutions to protect the workforce, support industry leaders, provide evidence-driven policy recommendations, and deliver technical support to companies and governments seeking to address heat stress and other occupational illnesses and injuries.

Speaker Bios:

Kathy Baughman McLeod, CEO of Climate Resilience for All (CRA)

Kathy founded and leads Climate Resilience for All, a global NGO focused on addressing the effects of extreme heat on women and vulnerable communities. Kathy brings a record of leadership and impact for public, nonprofit, and private sector organizations including the Arsht-Rockefeller Resilience Center, Bank of America, The Nature Conservancy, and the Office of the State of Florida’s Chief Financial Officer.  Her recent success extends from global climate resilience policy, extreme heat adaptation – including the first officially named heat wave – and nature-based solutions to insurance strategies to combat extreme heat’s economic effects on women. Kathy’s work touches many climate-impacted parts of the world including the US, South Asia, West Africa, Australia, Greece, Spain, Mexico, Chile, and Central America, Recently featured in the New York Times, she was also named by Reuters as one of 20 “Trailblazing Women in Climate for 2024,” is a member of FEMA’s National Advisory Council, and received Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business Alumni “Leader of Consequence” award in 2022. She holds an MBA from Duke University, an MS in Geography from Florida State University, and a certificate in Health Impact Assessment from the University of Liverpool.

Jay Lemery, MD, Is The Climate & Health Foundation Endowed Chair In Climate Medicine and Professor Of Emergency Medicine At The University Of Colorado School Of Medicine, Chief Of The Section Of Wilderness And Environmental Medicine, And Faculty in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health At The Colorado School Of Public Health. He Is A Past-President Of The Wilderness Medical Society.

Dr. Lemery has expertise in austere and remote medical care, as well as the effects of climate change on human health. At the University of Colorado, Lemery co-founded the Climate & Health Program, based at the School of Medicine.  The Program inaugurated the nation’s first graduate medical education climate & health science policy fellowship for physicians in 2017, in partnership with numerous federal agencies and nonprofits.  In fall 2022, the program launched the ‘Diploma in Climate Medicine’ for healthcare providers, the first of its kind at a School of Medicine, offering a distinction for expertise and leadership in this novel field. In 2017, Dr Lemery co-authored ‘Enviromedics: the Impact of Climate Change on Human Health’ and prior to that, co-edited ‘Global Climate Change and Human Health: From Science to Practice’, now in its second edition.  Dr. Lemery was a technical contributor to the 13 U.S. Federal Agency, ‘Fourth National Climate Assessment’, and co-author on the landmark New England Journal of Medicine study on Excess Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.  From 2011-2016, he was a consultant for the Climate and Health Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

He is currently the Medical Director for the National Science Foundation’s Polar Research program and Associate Element Scientist of the Exploration Medical Capability Element of NASA’s Human Research Program.  From 2014-2016, he was the EMS Medical Director for the United States Antarctic Program.  He is a Fellow at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines and formally a Visiting Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (FXB Center), where he was a contributing editor for its Journal, ‘Health and Human Rights,’ and Guest Editor for the special edition on ‘Climate Justice.’ Dr. Lemery is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and in 2021, was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

Jane Gilbert, Chief Heat Officer, Miami-Dade County

As Miami-Dade County’s first Chief Heat Officer, Ms. Gilbert works across departments and cross-sector partners to address the increasing health risks and economic burdens associated with extreme heat. Prior to joining the County, Ms. Gilbert served as the City of Miami’s first Chief Resilience Officer for four years. As CRO, Ms. Gilbert led the climate and urban resilience strategy development and implementation for the City of Miami, and, in partnership with Miami-Dade County and City of Miami Beach, for the greater Miami region. Prior to her public sector work, Ms. Gilbert managed The Miami Foundation’s civic leadership agenda on sea level rise, Wells Fargo’s philanthropy and community affairs in South Florida and served as the Executive Director for 3 nonprofits in Greater Miami. Ms. Gilbert holds a BA in Environmental Science from Barnard College and MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Arnab K Ghosh, MD, MSc, MA is the 2024 NIA/NIH Climate and Health Scholar, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University

Arnab K Ghosh, MD, MSc, MA is the 2024 NIA/NIH Climate and Health Scholar, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University, where his research program focuses on climate change and health, and development of interventions to protect vulnerable populations against climate-amplified threats. He is also a practicing internist. He is a fellow of the Atkinson Center for Sustainability and Center of Health Equity at Cornell University. He received his undergraduate medical degree and graduate degree in development studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and graduate degrees in health policy, and clinical/translational sciences at Cornell University. He undertook his training in emergency medicine at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, and Internal Medicine at NYU School of Medicine. He continues to practice medicine, and currently serves as a Medical Officer as part of the Disaster Medical Assistant Teams within the US Government’s National Disaster Medical System.

Dr. Chethan Sarabu, Co-Founder of CHILL and Director of Clinical Innovation, Health Tech Hub at Cornell Tech

Chethan Sarabu ‘09, M.D., trained in landscape architecture, pediatrics, and clinical informatics, builds bridges across these fields to design healthier environments and systems. He is the inaugural Director of Clinical Innovation for the Health Tech Hub at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute. Over the past six years, Sarabu has been a Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford Medicine and has worked in the health tech industry as Head of Product, Director of Clinical Informatics, and Medical Director at doc.ai and later Sharecare. He collaborates with the OpenNotes Lab as an AI and Informatics Strategist and serves as a board member of The Light Collective. In these roles, he has designed and implemented a wide array of innovations, including patient portals, EHR transformation, virtual clinical trials, AI-driven digital biomarkers, documentation, and health information policy initiatives, all through a lens of health equity and patient transparency. Sarabu co-founded CHILL, the Climate Health Innovation & Learning Lab, to connect the dots between climate, health, and the tech innovation community. As a shaper of the emergent field of climate health informatics, he has given multiple presentations on the topic at grand rounds and informatics symposia and is the Vice-Chair of the AMIA Climate, Health, and Informatics Working Group. His work bridges the Urban Tech and Health Tech hubs at Cornell Tech, addressing the health impacts of climate change through innovative technological solutions. This journey began as an undergraduate at Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, which provided fertile ground for interdisciplinary thought and action. Sarabu received his B.S. in 2009, from Cornell University, Landscape Architecture & Biological Sciences with a concentration in genetics.

Mónika Serrano, Resilience Program Manager at Turner Construction

Mónika Serrano leads Turner Construction’s resilience program and brings 20 years of experience in the construction industry. Passionate about addressing climate change, Serrano actively supports the implementation of climate adaptation in the built environment. Serrano serves on the Board of Directors for the National Institute of Building Sciences, is a member of the ASTM Property Resilience Assessment task force, and the LEED v5 Resilience Working Group. She has presented at various events on topics, such as resilience value, climate adaptation, resilient design, and construction. Serrano collaborates across design, engineering, construction, risk, insurance, and legal sectors, emphasizing the importance of partnerships for creating a resilient world. Serrano and Mederson are frequent collaborators, writing and presenting on incorporating resiliency into the built environment in the face of climate change. In January 2024, they launched a podcast, Adapt: Climate Change and the Built Environment, available on Apple Podcasts, Audible, and Spotify.

Katie MacDonald, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Tailwind 

Katie MacDonald is a climate activist, investor, and innovation policy expert who has been working on climate change since she skipped school at 17 to protest for offshore wind. She is the co-founder of Tailwind, an innovation studio focused on accelerating innovation for climate adaptation and resilience solutions. Before Tailwind, Katie served as Director of Tech to Market at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) where she was responsible for the organization’s early-stage startup investment portfolio.  In her role Katie oversaw a portfolio of over $200M in investments and including innovation programs focused on building decarbonization, finance and insurance, energy storage supply chain development, product manufacturing, industrial decarbonization, and carbon removal. Katie launched several new programs while at NYSERDA including the organization’s first ever startup equity investment program (New York Climate Progress), the nation’s first $20M research and commercialization hub for carbon removal companies based at Columbia University (the Carbontech Development Initiative), and the first publicly funded Insurance Accelerator. Katie also led the development of a new partnership between NYSERDA, and the country of Denmark focused on carbon removal and green hydrogen innovation that was announced at COP26.  Previously, Katie led Partnerships at Greentown Labs, North America’s largest climate tech incubator, where she founded the ‘Greentown Go’ program and ran seven unique accelerators designed to commercialize climate solutions from green hydrogen to advanced energy storage. Katie’s work at Greentown has enabled companies to raise over $300M (and counting) in follow-on funding. Before Greentown Labs, Katie served as the Executive Director of Cleantech Open Northeast, a regional accelerator for climate tech startups based in Boston, and as a Regional Divestment Organizer for 350.org. Katie is a Truman National Security Project Security Fellow and leads the organization’s Climate Affinity group. She has served on a variety of non-profit boards, supporting climate policy and water policy work. She is a graduate of the Environmental Studies Program at UMass Amherst where she graduated with honors.

Ibbi Almufti, Risk+ Resilience Leader, Arup and CEO of Class 3 Technologies 

Ibbi Almufti is an internationally recognized expert in building engineering, risk assessment and resilience planning. He founded Arup’s Risk and Resilience practice in the Americas, helping organizations understand their risks to natural hazards and climate change and designing effective resilience strategies to mitigate risks. He originally pioneered risk modeling approaches to quantify the impacts of earthquakes in terms of downtime, economic losses, and life safety issues for buildings and communities and has adapted this to industry-leading approaches for climate hazards like flood, wind, heat, and wildfires. Ibbi is a thought leader in resilience-based design for new and existing buildings, having developed the REDi Rating System, a framework which provides owners, architects, and engineers a holistic approach for achieving “beyond-code” resilience and functional recovery objectives. He recently led the development of Arup’s Universal Taxonomy for Natural Hazard and Climate Risk and Resilience Assessments which brings much needed clarity and a common language for evaluation of climate risks.

Nakita Devlin, CEO and Founder of Ric

Nakita Devlin is the CEO and Founder of Ric, a pioneering InsurTech company focused on creating accessible insurance solutions for communities vulnerable to climate-related disasters like flooding, heatwaves, and wildfires.

Jason Glaser, CEO of La Isla Network

Jason Glaser is the CEO of La Isla Network, an occupational health research and advisory organization dedicated to ending heat-related illnesses among workers and their communities worldwide. His goal is to drive research and policy that furthers understanding and prevention of occupational heat stress and ensures effective and viable systems for those most at risk. For more information visit laislanetwork.org

Matt Anderson, CEO of Cryogenx

Matt is the Founder & CEO of Cryogenx, a UK-based startup developing medical technology for a hotter planet. Cryogenx’s first product is a portable body cooling device for heatstroke treatment. Matt has a degree in Industrial Design & Technology from Brunel University, during which he created the concept for Cryogenx’s cooling technology. Matt is driven by developing innovative solutions to enable humans to adapt to a hotter planet.

Emilie Mazzacurati, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Tailwind 

Emilie is a climate tech entrepreneur and investor with 18 years of experience working at the intersection of climate change and capital markets. She is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Tailwind, an innovation studio focused on accelerating innovation for climate adaptation and resilience solutions. Emilie is also a Board Member of Climate Resilience for All, a gender-focused climate adaptation nonprofit dedicated to the protection of people and livelihoods from extreme heat and all its impacts. In 2012, Emilie founded Four Twenty Seven, a climate risk analytics firm that pioneered the use of climate data in financial decisions. Four Twenty Seven’s work laid the foundation for large financial institutions to integrate physical risk considerations in investment and lending decisions globally, winning the Risk Market Award for Alternative Data of the Year in 2019. Four Twenty Seven also led groundbreaking work on heat and adaptation with the state of California with the California Heat Assessment Tool (CHAT: cal-heat.org), and with hospitals and local governments across the US, earning First Prize in the ESRI Challenge of Climate Change and Human Health as part of its commitment to the White House 2015 Climate Data Initiative. Four Twenty Seven was acquired by Moody’s Corporation in 2019, and Emilie took a leadership role as Managing Director, Global Head of Climate Solutions to spearhead the integration of climate risk analytics in Moody’s offering. Previously, Emilie was Head of Research at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon, where she directed research and modeling on carbon markets and decarbonization. Emilie has published extensively and is a frequent public speaker on the impacts of climate change in financial markets and on adaptation finance. She is an advisor to the Climate Bonds Initiative Resilience Taxonomy Advisory Group, to several startups, and to the Global Adaptation and Resilience Investor group (GARI), which she helped co-found in 2016. Emilie taught at the University of California, Davis Executive MBA on Business & Climate Change from 2013 to 2019. She holds a Master’s of Political Science from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and a Master’s of Public Policy from UC Berkeley. She has received multiple awards for her work, including the Berkeley Visionary Award and Top 100 People in Finance.