OUR TEAM

Shalini has an interdisciplinary background with over a decade of experience in green design, engineering, economics, and policy. Before starting re:focus partners, Shalini served as Special Representative in the Office of Administrator Lisa Jackson at the US Environmental Protection Agency. In this position, she led the US-Brazil Joint Initiative on Urban Sustainability (JIUS) announced in March 2011 by Presidents Obama and Rousseff. The JIUS was a signature initiative of the June 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), demonstrating how environmental protection can serve as a driver for economic growth and job creation in building the greener economies and smarter cities of the future. Previously, Shalini served as Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Office of International & Tribal Affairs at the US EPA and as Deputy Associate Director for Energy and Climate at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. She joined the Obama Administration from Resources for the Future, where she was awarded a patent for her work on the Adaptation Atlas.

Shalini received her PhD in Engineering & Public Policy and B.Arch in Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University, and was also a visiting associate professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, where she designed and taught a course on Case Studies in Sustainable Development. She is currently a nonresident senior fellow with The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program.

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Jamie Rhodes is an expert in risk mitigation strategies that fall at the intersection of policy, technology, and project development. He is the Director of Insurance-Linked Finance at re:focus partners, co-founder of the TRT Group, and a Co-Principal Investigator of the RE.bound Program. Jamie also serves as President of the Embori Group LLC, which includes several firms engaged in developing near-term approaches to reduce CO2 emissions and mitigate associated climate risks. Jamie’s work in these fields spans 16 years and includes roles in academia, in the private sector, and as a grantee on projects designed to advance the public interest. He is an entrepreneur who holds multiple patents and has founded and built multiple successful enterprises across diverse industry segments. Jamie earned a Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University, and worked as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and then as a Staff Researcher at U.C. Davis.

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