Katya Wowk excels in using transdisciplinary approaches to strengthen community resilience to disasters and environmental change. With most of her work based in the Gulf of Mexico and Texas, she partners with communities on the frontlines of societal change to understand resilience at the hyper-local level, as well as the assets, barriers and tradeoffs that occur in advancing local visions and goals.

Previously, she served as Chair for Community Resilience at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies (HRI), Texas A&M University Corpus Christi (TAMUCC), where she led a diverse team focused on co-producing science needed to advance resilience at the local level, and cofounded the Texas Coastal Bend Regional Resilience Partnership, a formal association with the Coastal Bend Council of Governments focused on building local capacity to mitigate disaster risk across an eleven county region in South Texas. She also held the position of Director of the Texas OneGulf RESTORE Center of Excellence, where she and the team advanced co-produced science with five Texas state agencies. Prior to her positions with HRI, Katya served in senior positions at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including in the Office of the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere (NOAA Administrator). Katya holds a Ph.D. in International Coastal and Ocean Policy from the University of Delaware and an M.P.A. in Environmental Science and Policy from Columbia University. A proud Navy spouse, she and her family are based in Norfolk, VA.