FP Virtual Dialogue: Addressing the Root Causes of Climate Migration

Joaquin has worked hard to seize the opportunities created by the sacrifices of his grandmother and prior generations. Joaquin graduated with honors from Stanford University in 1996. He then went on to attend Harvard Law School where he received his Juris Doctorate degree in 2000. Upon his return to San Antonio at 28 years old, Joaquin joined a private law practice and was elected to the Texas Legislature. In 2012, Joaquin was elected to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives as representative of Texas' 20th Congressional District.

Despite a difficult political environment during his time as state legislator, Joaquin transcended partisan gridlock to help restore millions of dollars in funding to critical health care and education programs. As Vice Chairman of the Higher Education Committee and Democratic Floor Leader in the Texas House, he was also at the forefront in proposing forward-thinking legislative reforms in the areas of mental health, teen pregnancy, and juvenile justice.

Now in his fourth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, Joaquin serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Education and Labor Committee. He was the 2013 Co-President for the House freshman Democrats and currently serves as Chair of the Texas Democratic Caucus. He created the Trailblazers College Tour, personally raising money to send underprivileged students on college visits, giving them exposure to some of the nation’s best institutions of higher education. He also founded SA READS, San Antonio’s largest literacy campaign and book drive. To honor and express gratitude to San Antonio grandparents and other family members raising relatives who aren’t their children, Joaquin created the annual Families Helping Families dinner and awards. He has also taught as a visiting professor of law at St. Mary’s University and as an adjunct professor at Trinity University. Joaquin is active on several boards of education-related, non-profit organizations, including the National College Advising Corps, and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials’ Taskforce on Education.

Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr OBE was sworn-in as Mayor of Freetown in May 2018 with a commitment to transform Freetown using an inclusive, data-driven approach to address challenges in the city. The 3-year Transform Freetown plan details 19 concrete targets across 11 sectors and covers issues ranging from tackling environmental degradation to facilitating the creation of jobs in the tourism sector. A finance professional with over 25 years of private sector experience in strategic planning, risk management consulting and project management, Mayor Aki-Sawyerr’s public sector engagement began with her work during the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic and her subsequent role as Delivery Team Lead for the second phase of a multi-stakeholder program to drive socio-economic recovery in Sierra Leone post Ebola. Mayor Aki-Sawyerr is a Chartered Accountant and holds an MSc in Politics of the World Economy from the London School of Economics and a BSc Hons in Economics from Fourah Bay College. She was recently recognized in the BBC 2020 100 Women list.

Justin Ginnetti is the Senior Officer for Information Management and Risk Analysis at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Prior to joining IFRC, he was head of data and analysis at the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and part of the Global Assessment Report team at the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. He led the development of the first global disaster displacement risk model and several regional and national disaster displacement risk models. He has also contributed to analyses of the impacts of climate change on displacement risk and to the IPCC’s Special Report on Extreme Events (SREX). He is a graduate of Penn and Tufts.

Jami Montgomery serves as the Division Chief for the Resilient Communities and Systems Division within USAID's Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (RFS), Center for Resilience. In this role she oversees the Bureau's climate adaptation work and leads a team that provides technical leadership and support to the Bureau and the Agency on areas related to the intersection of resilience with other technical areas, including natural resource management, social protection, conflict, and climate change adaptation. Ms. Montgomery began her career at USAID in 2011, serving as the Climate Change Coordinator for USAID's Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA) before joining the Center for Resilience in early 2017 as a resilience advisor. Throughout her tenure at USAID she has provided technical assistance and field support for programming that strengthens resilience of people and systems to shocks and stresses, including those from climate change. Prior to joining USAID she spent many years managing both domestic and international water security programs in the nonprofit sector. Ms. Montgomery holds master's degrees in marine studies from the University of Delaware and in environmental engineering and science from Johns Hopkins University.

Reena is a television journalist who has worked as a White House correspondent, foreign reporter, and news anchor for ABC, CBS, and Fox News. She has reported around the world from India to Israel, Libya to Lebanon. She was the anchor, most recently, of the CBS evening news on Saturday nights. She is the founder of Good Trouble Productions, a media company focused on creating content with purpose.

Chris Perine is an environmental management specialist with over 25 years of international experience working on climate change mitigation and adaptation, environmental impact assessment, urban environmental infrastructure development and natural resources management. He is currently the director of Chemonics’ Corporate Environmental Sustainability department, and leads the development of a global environmental sustainability program and provides technical expertise on environmental sustainability for Chemonics’ operations and its large portfolio of client activities worldwide. Prior to this role, Chris was chief of party for the USAID-funded Adaptation, Thought Leadership and Assessments (ATLAS) project. ATLAS provides analysis of climate risk to USAID programs and host government policies and plans worldwide. Mr. Perine holds a B.A. in economics and an M.A. in urban and environmental planning, both from the University of Virginia