Renee Collini, Ph.D., Community Resilience Center at The Water Institute, brings years of experience in providing tools and support to federal, state, and local entities pursuing adaptation and resilience strategies.

As director of the Community Resilience Center, Renee draws from on-the-ground experience working in underserved communities and navigating federal, state, and local governmental processes and systems to help support effective and equitable climate resilience planning and action in communities across the Gulf Coast.

Prior to joining The Water Institute, Renee served as a coastal climate resilience specialist with Mississippi State University and Sea Grant in the northern Gulf of Mexico for almost a decade, facilitating the flow of information between researchers and decision-makers to improve science application. As the lead of the Program for Local Adaptation to Climate Effects: Sea-Level Rise, she integrated a multi-state network of stakeholders, researchers, NGOs, and state and federal agencies to build tools, programs, and projects to address gaps in sea-level rise observing, research, and decision-making. She has collaborated on projects and efforts that have improved coastal community and environmental resilience and has led development of tools and programing that have been applied throughout the Gulf and across the United States. Collini is a recognized leader in resilience across the Gulf of Mexico and is serving as an author on the Fifth National Climate Assessment Coastal Effects Chapter.

Collini received her bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Texas at Dallas, master’s degree in marine sciences from the University of South Alabama and her Ph.D. from Mississippi State University was focused on human sciences.