Natalie Bennett

Natalie Bennett has spent over a decade working in climate resilience and community-based adaptation across the federal government, academia, nonprofits, and consulting sector. She has experience managing resilience initiatives and multi-stakeholder partnerships, developing risk and vulnerability assessments, creating adaptation strategies and tools, and conducting mixed methods social science research. Natalie holds a PhD from the Environmental Studies Department at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she developed applied research investigating the social and cognitive dimensions of adaptation decision-making. Throughout her career, she has prioritized usable science and participatory approaches that are co-designed in partnership with stakeholders and communities to drive actionable solutions.

As Community Partnerships and Engagement Specialist for NSF Regional Resilience Innovation Incubator (R2I2) National Office, Natalie leads engagement efforts across the R2I2 network of teams. She supports teams in their work with communities and stakeholders and leads communications and resource development to help disseminate the work of the R2I2 teams more broadly. 

Areas of expertise: Climate adaptation and resilience, stakeholder engagement, science communication, social science research