executive leadership
Kathy Baughman McLeod​
Chief Executive Officer
Kathy brings a record of executive leadership and impact for public, nonprofit, and private sector institutions including the Arsht-Rockefeller Resilience Center, Bank of America, The Nature Conservancy, and the Office of the State of Florida’s Chief Financial Officer.
Her recent proven success extends from global climate resilience policy, risk and adaptation financing, and nature-based climate solutions, to strategies to combat extreme heat.
She is a member of FEMA's National Advisory Council and was named by Reuters as one of 20 “Trailblazing Women in Climate for 2024.” She holds an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, an MS in Geography from Florida State University, and a certificate in Health Impact Assessment from the University of Liverpool.
Geraldine Henrich-Koenis
​Chief Communications Officer
Geraldine’s leadership in public and media relations, global communications, advocacy, branding, and crisis management for global, national, and local nonprofits has delivered tangible, lasting impacts.
Her work has benefited organizations including the Arsht-Rockefeller Resilience Center, Center for Reproductive Rights, The Nature Conservancy, and Families USA. Her mastery of communications strategically conveys the urgency and complexity of the impacts and solutions of extreme heat.
She holds an MA in International Development from the University of Amsterdam, a BA in Communications from George Mason University, and speaks English, Spanish, and Dutch.
Mary McBryde
Chief Program Officer
Mary’s achievements include working with nonprofit, philanthropic, and financial partners to mobilize investment and create innovative solutions that protect people and the planet from the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss.
She has furthered the missions of the Arsht-Rockefeller Resilience Center, Liquid Assets, Fidelity Foundation, Lyme Timber, and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and brings deep expertise in philanthropy, strategy and program development, nature-based climate solutions, and coalition-building.
Mary holds an MS in Forestry from the University of Washington and a BA from SMU.
​Christina Stanton
Chief Operations Officer
Christina is a seasoned executive with an entrepreneurial passion for people, innovation, and achieving impact.
She previously served as the COO of Climate Finance Advisors and held other positions at the Arsht-Rockefeller Resilience Center, NextEra Energy Resources, Natsource Asset Management, NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies, and the Development Bank of Japan.
Christina holds an MPA from Columbia University and a BA in International Relations with a minor in Women/Gender Studies from Sweet Briar College.
staff
Eugenia kargbo
senior heat strategist, africa
Eugenia is the chief heat officer in Freetown, Sierra Leone. She was designated as Time Magazine’s 100 Next Most Influential people of 2022 and has been featured by the New York Times and other international publications for her work in Freetown.
Her professional career started in the banking industry before serving as the Technical Lead for the Environment and Sanitation Department Freetown. Since 2021 to date, Freetown has made tremendous strides to reduce extreme heat by designing and implementing sustainable cooling initiatives to enable vulnerable communities and groups such as women adapt to rising temperatures.
​
Eugenia also served as a Co-lead for the #FreetownTheTreeTown campaign to plant, grow and digitally track 1 million trees in the city of Freetown to address the urgent risks of climate change, an initiative that has provided green jobs for over 2000 youth. She has also served as a data analyst for the Presidential Delivery Unit.
She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Sierra Leone and a master’s degree in entrepreneurship from the University of Milan.
laurie goering
extreme heat editor
Laurie Goering is an award-winning climate change journalist and editor, with a passion for storytelling and working with frontline journalists across the world to develop other great climate change storytellers.
She created and for 14 years ran the Thomson Reuters Foundation's news website on the human impacts of a warming planet, recruiting and managing a team of Global South freelance writers in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America, many of them in the most climate-vulnerable parts of the globe.
Prior to coming to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Laurie was a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune newspaper based for 15 years in Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, South Africa, India and the UK. She opened the first post-revolution U.S. newspaper bureau in Cuba in 2000 and covered the Second Gulf War in Iraq in 2003. She has written about and run coverage on a broad range of climate change issues for more than 20 years.