Marissa Aho

About this Speaker

Marissa Aho, AICP has served as the Policy Director/Chief Resilience Officer for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources since July 2021. In this role, she leads the Policy and Resilience team and supports the Equity and Environmental Justice and Grants teams. She previously served as the first Chief Resilience Officer for the cities of Los Angeles and Houston. Marissa led the development and execution of the cities’ resilience strategies (Resilient Los Angeles and Resilient Houston). These are focused on preparing for catastrophic events and addressing chronic stressors. These projects and programs include earthquake early warning and seismic retrofits; embedding resilience measures into affordable housing projects; urban heat island mapping and advancing cooling measures including tree planting and green stormwater infrastructure; and integrating resilience into Hurricane Harvey recovery, COVID-19 response and recovery, and Winter Storm Uri response and recovery. Prior to this, she was an urban planning and land use consultant at two private firms in Los Angeles for 10 years. Marissa has a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Communications, Legal Institutions, Economics and Government (CLEG) from American University in Washington, D.C., and a Master of Planning from the University of Southern California.