This month, the Center for Climate and Security continued to expand its climate security network, bringing new experts and partners on board.
Advisory Board and Non-Resident Fellow Additions
Dr. Tegan Blaine joined CCS as a member of the Advisory Board. Dr. Blaine is currently an independent consultant and an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Previously, she served for five years as the Director of the Program on Climate, Environment, and Conflict at the US Institute of Peace (USIP).
Prior to joining USIP, she served as vice president on a climate change initiative at the National Geographic Society; led the climate change team in USAID’s Bureau for Africa; worked on climate change and international development at McKinsey & Company; served as a policy advisor on water at the US Department of State; and taught math and physics as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania. Dr. Blaine has a Ph.D. in oceanography and climate from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Greg Pollock joined CCS as a Non-resident Fellow. He is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where he teaches graduate courses on national security risks.
He previously served in a series of leadership positions in the Office of the US Secretary of Defense (OSD) from 2010 to 2025, most recently as the acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Arctic and Global Resilience Policy.
CCS and CRL Staff Updates
CCS Fellow Siena Cicarelli also joined the Food Security Leadership Council as an Associate Fellow, where she will bring a security perspective to the Council’s recommendations on how the US can renew its leadership on global food security.
Caroline Baxter, CCS Senior Advisor and Director of the Converging Risks Lab, was selected as a Fellow at the NATO Climate Change and Security Center of Excellence. Over the next six months, she will be conducting research on the operational and tactical impacts of climate change on the battlefield. The outcome of her research will be a set of recommendations for how to overlay climate realism on top of NATO’s Warfighting Capstone Concept (NWCC) to ensure continued military advantage and seize the opportunity to deepen the interoperability of the Alliance.
At the end of September, CCS Research Fellow Noah Fritzhand was selected to be part of the third cohort of the Law, Policy and Science in Environmental Peacebuilding Program organized by the Geneva Water Hub. The program brought together 18 young climate security leaders from around the world to learn from and with one another.