RISE 2019 Conference

Transforming University Engagement In Pre- and Post-Disaster Environments: Lessons from Puerto Rico

Jennie Stephens

Director, School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs

Northeastern University

 

havidan rodriguez photo

Jennie C. Stephens is Director of Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs, Dean’s Professor of Sustainability Science & Policy, and Director for Strategic Research Collaborations at the Global Resilience Institute. Her research, teaching, and community engagement focus on social-political aspects of renewable energy transformation, energy justice, climate justice, energy democracy, and gender and race in energy and climate. Her forthcoming book, “Diversifying Power to Save the World” (Island Press forthcoming in 2020) demonstrates that responding to climate change require diversifying leadership, redistributing wealth and power, moving beyond technocratic solutions to climate and prioritizing transformative social justice and social change. Professor Stephens received a 2017 Arab-American Frontiers Fellowship from the National Academy of Sciences, she is a 2015-2016 Leopold Leadership fellow, and her book Smart Grid (R)Evolution: Electric Power Struggles (Cambridge University Press, 2015) explores social and cultural debates about energy system change (co-authored with Wilson & Peterson).  Before joining the faculty at Northeastern University in Boston, she taught at University of Vermont, Clark University, Tufts and MIT. She earned her PhD and MS at the California Institute of Technology in Environmental Science & Engineering and her BA at Harvard in Environmental Science & Public Policy.