Forbes Tompkins

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Forbes Tompkins
Forbes Tompkins
Forbes Tompkins
Senior Officer
U.S. Conservation
The Pew Charitable Trusts

PROFILE

Forbes Tompkins leads outreach to federal agencies for Pew’s U.S. conservation project. In this role, he focuses on key congressional legislation to build resilience to current and future climate-related disasters and to support wildlife connectivity and ecosystem restoration. Tompkins previously supported Pew’s flood-prepared communities initiative and worked on federal legislation and agency actions to improve resilience to flooding. During his time at Pew, he also took a one-year assignment through the Intergovernmental Personnel Act to serve as director for climate adaptation and resilience with the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In doing so, he helped to lead efforts such as developing a first-ever national climate resilience framework, exploring innovative resilience strategies, and assisting more than 20 federal agencies with generating climate adaptation plans.

Before joining Pew, Tompkins was a research associate at the World Resources Institute, where he analyzed the effects of rising sea level and heavy precipitation on communities, local response efforts, and the need for national policy to mitigate damage. He also held positions at the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development and on Capitol Hill as an environmental science and policy expert. He gained experience forecasting the weather with the Florida State University weather show and WCTV in Tallahassee, Florida.

Tompkins holds a bachelor’s degree in meteorology from Florida State University and master’s degrees in meteorology from the Florida Institute of Technology and in energy policy and climate from Johns Hopkins University.

OUR WORK

Forward-Looking Policies Lead to More Resilient Communities, Infrastructure, and Ecosystems

Ambitious, proactive state and federal policies can help infrastructure and communities become more resilient to increasingly frequent and severe floods, wildfires, droughts, and extreme heat events.

Governments Need to Prepare for the Effects, Costs of a Changing Climate

Billion-dollar disasters are on the rise. Every state is feeling the effects of a changing climate, whether from more frequent flooding, drought-inducing heat waves, or raging wildfires. Policymakers...

Article

March 29, 2023

To Better Measure Climate Resilience Efforts, Federal Leaders Chart Collaborative Course

With natural disasters increasing in number and severity—from 2000 to 2021 a flood happened somewhere in the U.S. on eight out of every 10 days—federal, state, and local governments are working to both...

Article

January 31, 2023

5 Disaster Resilience Challenges Facing State and Federal Officials

To ensure communities prepare for, recover from, and build resilience to natural disasters, officials at all levels of government must coordinate effectively—which is far easier said than done. To help...

Article

December 20, 2022

White House Plan Looks to Nature to Improve Climate Resiliency, Biodiversity, and Social Equity

At the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP27) in November in Egypt, U.S. President Joe Biden underscored his administration’s commitment...

Article

December 15, 2022

Flooding Is Nearly a Daily Occurrence Throughout the U.S.

Flooding in the U.S. is a pervasive, year-round threat, affecting Americans nationwide. And although flooding from large-scale extreme weather events such as hurricanes tend to grab headlines, they are...