Kathy Baughman McLeod is a CEO 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 the world's most vulnerable communities. She is the founding and former Director of the Arsht-Rock Resilience Center - built to reach one billion people worldwide with climate-resilience solutions by 2030, with a special focus on society’s most vulnerable. She launched the Center’s extreme heat work that is delivering impact across early-warning, policy, finance, and on-the-ground solutions, including the appointment of chief heat officers in cities around the world. Additionally, she spearheaded the global push to name and categorize heat waves to save lives and build a new, essential culture of awareness and preparation and launched the first “extreme heat income insurance” for thousands of poor, heat-exposed women workers in India. Under Kathy’s leadership, Arsht-Rock also launched the United Nations Climate Convention’s “Race to Resilience” campaign and Resilience Pavilion at COPs 26, 27, and 28.

Baughman McLeod was Bank of America’s Global Executive for Environmental and Social Risk, the Global Managing Director for Climate Risk and Resilience at The Nature Conservancy, and Deputy Chief of Staff to Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, while also serving on the Florida Energy & Climate Commission for two terms. She is a member of the US Government’s Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Advisory Council as the agency’s first climate specialist served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Commission on “BiodiverCities by 2030,” is a member of the Operating Committee of the Insurance Development Forum, a member of the Global Commission for Urban SDG Finance, and of the Pathfinder International President’s Council.

Kathy sits on the advisory boards of Climate Alpha and Terra Alpha, a climate risk analytics firm and an environmentally focused investment management company, respectively. She is the recipient of the Fuqua School of Business 2021 “Leader of Consequence” award and a Policy Fellow of the French Foreign Ministry. She holds an MBA from Duke University and an MS in Geography from Florida State University.