Speakers

Sonia Brubaker is the Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Miami. Also serving as the Director of the Office of Resilience and Sustainability, she’s responsible for leading resilience expertise across the municipality to effectively address climate change challenges. She has over 20 years of experience in the environmental sector building relationships and successfully leading and implementing change. Her expertise in federal funding and environmental justice focus on providing equitable outcomes related to flooding, housing, buildings, transit, recreational areas, and more.

In this role, Sonia implements actions to reach the City’s carbon neutral, coastal resilience, and extreme heat goals. Her work centers on 1) Adaptation initiatives to address sea level rise flooding and intense storms by incorporating nature-based features in stormwater infrastructure projects, building living shorelines, identifying flooding vulnerabilities for critical assets, and creating Resilience Hubs; 2) Mitigation initiatives to reduce greenhouse gases by increasing energy efficiency, advancing renewable energy, increasing electric vehicle chargers throughout the community, and advocating for electrifying the City’s fleet; and 3) Justice initiatives to engage with climate justice communities to increase participation and prevent climate gentrification. These initiatives move toward the City’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, with an interim goal to reduce 60% of emissions from 2018 levels by 2035, while reducing the impacts of extreme heat, sea level rise, and intense storms, on vulnerable residents.

Prior to this position, Sonia previously served as the Director for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Water Infrastructure and Resiliency Finance Center where she worked with local governments to identify affordable financing opportunities to fund drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure investments that are sustainable and resilient.

She earned a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Policy and Planning from Virginia Tech in 2004 and a Master of Environmental Management with an emphasis in Leadership from Duke University in 2014.