Join us to mark the anniversary of Helene by learning about climate resilience and community resilience. We’re excited to host two leading thinkers/doers in the resilience space:
Faculty: If you have a class that meets during one of these times and would like to bring your class to this event, please email Laura England at englandle@appstate.edu to reserve seats.
QEP thanks our co-host for this event, App State’s Department of Geography & Planning.
SPEAKER BIOS
Marlena Gutiérrez Byrne is North Carolina’s Acting Chief Resilience Officer in the State Resilience Office, NC Department of Environmental Quality. Along with the rest of the team at the SRO, Marlena works to advance resilience of people, places, and natural areas in the state of North Carolina. She advises state policy makers on natural hazards resilience and coordinates state, federal, and local agencies, as well as nongovernmental partners, in helping North Carolina mitigate and prepare for the effects of climate change. Marlena is a land use attorney, with extensive experience advising on large-scale public infrastructure, planning, historic preservation, public lands and capital improvement projects. Before moving to North Carolina eight years ago, Marlena was a Deputy City Attorney for San Francisco, working with city officials and departments on all aspects of urban planning, land use, and environmental law. Marlena earned her law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and her Bachelor of Arts in English from Stanford University. She has served on the Board of Directors of Triangle Land Conservancy, including as its chair and lives in Durham with her husband and rescue pup.
Dr. Deirdre Pfeiffer is Principal Investigator of the Arizona Research Center for Housing and Economic Solutions, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Hispanic Serving Institution Center of Excellence jointly led by Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy and University of Arizona’s Drachman Institute. ARCHES is advancing knowledge and evidence-based solutions related to problems of housing security, climate, and health in the arid Southwest. Her current research on housing and health explores whether single-family home garages and driveways form an adaptive neighborhood infrastructure that has the potential to offer broad public benefits by studying how residents use these spaces for purposes other than to park cars and their potential future use in addressing pressing community issues like housing affordability, social isolation, and exposure to extreme heat. Deirdre earned a Ph.D. in Urban Planning and a M.A. in Urban Planning at the University of California-Los Angeles.
Previous events in our Climate Resilience Forum Series:
February 2025: Forum with resilience experts Brock Long and Ashley Ward
January 2025: Forum with community resilience leaders David Jackson, Liz Whiteman, Andy Hill and Kellie Reed Ashcraft