Helen is a Climate Infrastructure Consultant and a core member of PPIAF’s dedicated climate resiliency and environmental sustainability team, which works to mainstream climate mitigation, adaptation, and resiliency efforts within the group’s technical advisory work and knowledge product development. Her efforts aid directly in the promotion of private participation in infrastructure through better planning of and capacity building for low-carbon and climate-resilient (LCR) infrastructure works.
Helen has over nine years of academic, industry, and government experience spanning natural hazards, landscape evolution, and climate change research, as well as the implementation of this knowledge within major PPP and public works infrastructure projects that encompass urban transit, water supply, and sanitation systems.
Helen received a PhD from The Pennsylvania State University in the geosciences, with a specific focus on disaster risk management (DRM) and its link to climate change, in which she used geophysical and geochemical data sets to better understand timescales of natural disasters and their impact on landscape development. After her time in academia and prior to joining PPIAF, Helen worked in the private sector as a geologist at an engineering consulting firm on the integration of geologic, environmental, and climate criteria within the design and construction of large-scale infrastructure projects. Helen also consults for the U.S. federal government to better plan for infrastructure lifecycle risks by investigating failed infrastructure projects and applying lessons learned to newly planned infrastructure in its development phases.