Maya Buchanan *17 SPIA
Public-Private Partnership Builder, Strategic Planner, Transformative Change Maker
Assistant Vice President, Climate, Resilience, and Sustainability, WSP USA
At WSP, a professional services firm, Maya Buchanan leads and advises on global initiatives focused on climate risk and readiness for utilities, large infrastructure projects and communities. She guides organizations to integrate climate change considerations into all operations and planning, specializing in scenario and adaptive planning — techniques to make complex decisions under deep uncertainty. Buchanan served as a liaison of the White House Subcommittee on Global Change Research for the U.S. National Climate Assessment. She was a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the New York Panel on Climate Change Assessments, among others. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton, focused on applied climate science and adaptation, and a master’s degree in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins. Buchanan served on the Science and Society leadership committee for the American Geophysical Union and as board president for the American Society of Adaptation Professionals.