Dr. Kristen Averyt

About this Speaker

Kristen Averyt is a research professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She works to combat climate change. She now serves as Senior Climate Advisor in the Office of the Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak. There, she leads climate planning and policy development for the state. 

Averyt has a long record of working on climate issues. This includes U.S. western water resources, the energy-water nexus, and climate resilience and adaptation. She worked in the U.S. Senate as a NOAA Knauss fellow. She also worked at the National Academies of Science as a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy fellow. She was a lead author on the 2014 U.S. National Climate Assessment. She was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I Support Unit as well. In that group, she was one of many scientists who shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Averyt earned her master's degree as a Fulbright fellow in New Zealand. Of all her honors, she is most proud of the Girl Scouts of the Sierra Nevada Award for Environmental Leadership.  

Averyt was recently elected to the American Meteorological Society (AMS) council. She is a Senior Policy fellow of the AMS and works on many other service and board activities. She used to serve as president of the Desert Research Institute. She also held positions at the University of Colorado Boulder as the Associate Director for Science at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. She was director of the Western Water Assessment (WWA) as well. The WWA is a NOAA program that works on regional climate issues. Those issues include drought and the Colorado River.