Michael Berkowitz

Michael Berkowitz is the Executive Director of the University of Miami’s Climate Resilience Institute. He is also the Eric T. Levin Endowed Chair in Climate Resilience. The Institute is an operational unit connecting and amplifying the work the University’s 12 schools and colleges. Previously he was a Founding Principal at Resilient Cities Catalyst, a global non-profit helping cities and their partners tackle their toughest challenges. In August 2013, he joined the Rockefeller Foundation to shape and oversee the creation of 100 Resilient Cities (100RC). He served as the 100RC President from 2013 to 2019. The cities in the 100RC network created more than 80 holistic resilience strategies, which outlined over 4,000 concrete actions and initiatives, resulting in more than 150 collaborations between private sector and public sector to address city challenges, including $230 million of pledged support from platform partners and more than $25 billion leveraged from national, philanthropic, and private sources to implement resilience projects. From 2005 to 2013 he worked at Deutsche Bank in a variety of risk management roles including as the global head of Operational Risk Management, where he oversaw the firm’s operational risk capital planning efforts and connected the myriad operational risk management efforts group-wide. From 1998 until 2005, he was Deputy Commissioner at the Office of Emergency Management in New York City. He worked on planning initiatives, including the city’s Coastal Storm, Biological Terrorism and Transit Strike plans. He also responded to major incidents including the crash of American Airlines 587, the 2003 Northeast blackout, as well as the 2001 World Trade Center disaster. Michael also sits on the Deltares International Advisory Board, the Steering Committee of the South Florida Risk and Resilience Tech Hub, the Geos Institute’s Board of Directors and is a member of the Ross Cities Prize Steering Committee.