People

Kate Orff

Faculty Director

_{Kate Orff is the Faculty Director of the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes, an Associate Professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and Director of the Urban Design (MSAUD) Program. She coordinates complex, interdisciplinary studios centered on urban systems of the future with a focus on ecological infrastructure, global cities and climate adaptation. Kate is a registered landscape architect and a principal of SCAPE, an award winning, 30-person professional practice based in lower Manhattan. The firm has won national and local American Society of Landscape Architecture Awards for built projects, planning, and communications work. The work of the office has been featured on the cover of Landscape Architecture Magazine, Landscape Architecture Magazine China, and Topos, and in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Economist, among other publications.}

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Thad Pawlowski 

Managing Director

_{Thaddeus Pawlowski is the managing director of the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes at Columbia University..  CRCL uses the tools of urban planning and design to empower communities and ecosystems to survive and thrive in a world in crisis.   With the Resilience Accelerator program, CRCL conducts multidisciplinary research, intensive public convenings and analysis and visualization of potential futures for the built environment.  Before founding CRCL, Thaddeus worked in New York City government advancing climate change adaptation policies in through urban design projects, zoning and disaster recovery programs.  He was awarded a Harvard Loeb Fellowship in 2014 and teaches urban planning seminars and urban design studios at Columbia GSAPP where he brings the challenges of frontline communities into the classroom. As co-lead of the Environmental and Climate Just Cities Network, he has been active in forming partnerships between the Columbia Climate School and communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis.}  

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Johanna Lovecchio

Associate Director

_{Johanna Lovecchio is the Associate Director of the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes. She specializes in urban climate adaptation planning and public infrastructure project design that is forward-looking and conscious of community-based and ecosystem resilience. At CRCL, she manages the Resilience Accelerator, which delivers strategic support, technical design and climate systems research, and intensive local workshops to advance resilience project design and implementation in partnership with local governments around the world. As part of the Accelerator, Johanna led a year-long with Tel Aviv-Yafo – “Urban Heat, Equity, Resilience, and the Future of the Public Realm” – which assessed city-wide vulnerability to heat impacts and climate projections, and generated community-based urban design concepts now being piloted by the municipality. Today, she is leading CRCL's partnership with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation's Resilient Reefs Initiative, an effort to advance resilience strategies and projects in five UNESCO World Heritage Reef Sites. Through this partnership, she is leading the delivery of a Resilient Reef Restoration Trialing Framework in Ningaloo Coast in Queensland, Australia and planning for a future Accelerator with Belize focusing on resilience projects in the Mesoamerican Reef context.} 

_{Prior to joining CRCL, Johanna worked as a Senior Analyst and Program Manager at HR&A Advisors, where she scaled resilience capacity-building models, including the National Disaster Resilience Competition and Global Resilience Academy programs, developed city- and district-wide climate adaptation plans, such as the Lower Manhattan Climate Resilience Study, and supported the design and evaluation of transformative urban resilience infrastructure investments. As City Planner at the New York City Department of City Planning, she researched planning opportunities in post-industrial, waterfront communities impacted by Hurricane Sandy. Johanna holds a Masters of Urban Planning from the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service and dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Environmental Studies and Metropolitan Studies from the New York University College of Arts and Sciences.}

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