The Aspen Institute

The “Conversations with Great Leaders, in Memory of Preston Robert Tisch” series presents Naomi Klein, journalist, columnist, author, and Inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University, and Cynthia Rosenzweig, Senior Research Scientist and head of Climate Impacts Group at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Co-Chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, and Senior Research Scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, in conversation with Ross Andersen, deputy editor at The Atlantic.

Cynthia Rosenzweig is Senior Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and an Adjunct Senior Research Scientist at the Columbia University Earth Institute. She is also a Professor in the Department of Environmental Science at Barnard College. At NASA GISS, she heads the Climate Impacts Group, whose mission is to investigate the interactions of climate (both variability and change) on systems and sectors important to human well-being. Dr. Rosenzweig has organized and led large-scale interdisciplinary, national and international studies of climate change impacts and adaptation in rural and urban settings. She is co-director of the Urban Climate Change Research Institute and co-editor of its Assessment Reports on Climate Change and Cities. She was co-chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the Mayor advising the city on adaptation for its critical infrastructure. She is also a co-founder and member of the Executive Committee of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project, a globally integrated transdisciplinary study of climate impacts on the agricultural sector at national and global scales.

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and New York Times bestselling author of seven books, most recently On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal (2019). Klein was named Senior Correspondent at The Intercept in February 2017 and has written a regular column for The Nation, The Globe and Mail and The Guardian that was syndicated in major newspapers around the world by The New York Times Syndicate. She is the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University. Klein is also one of the organizers of Canada’s Leap Manifesto, a blueprint for a rapid and justice-based transition off fossil fuels, and co-founder and advisory board chair of The Leap, a climate justice organization developed from the Manifesto that exists to inject new urgency and bold ideas into confronting the intersecting crises of our time: climate change, racism and inequality.

Ross Andersen is Deputy Editor of The Atlantic. Previously, he was editor of the magazine’s Science, Technology, and Health sections. Prior to joining The Atlantic, he was the deputy editor of Aeon magazine in London, and before that, he was the science editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. In addition to his work as an editor, Andersen is known for his award-winning feature essays, which straddle philosophy, technology, science, history, and the arts.

The Aspen Institute is grateful to Steve Tisch, Laurie Tisch, and Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch and to the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund for their generous support of the Conversations with Great Leaders series.