Senior Advisor, Adaptation and Resilience
Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio has nearly twenty years of experience developing and implementing climate change adaptation and resilience programs. Immediately prior to joining the United Nations Foundation, she was a Senior Adaptation and Resilience Advisor with the World Resources Institute and an International Engagement Associate with the Food and Land Use Coalition. Prior to that, she was the Action Track Co-Manager for the Global Commission on Adaptation, where she led the development of impact initiatives on locally-led adaptation, agriculture, and food security, among other issues. She was also a Regional Programme manager for Action on Climate Today, a £23 million UK Agency for International Development-supported climate change program that mainstreamed resilience into planning and budgeting at the national and sub-national level in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. Based in New Delhi, she managed an implementation team of approximately 40 people across the program locations. Cristina also served as a Senior Associate Director at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York from 2007-2015, where she developed and managed initiatives to build resilience to climate change in water management, small scale fisheries, and ecosystems and the services they provide to humankind. She managed a grant portfolio of over $100 Million. Cristina was a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University and a Doctorate in Ecology from the University of Colorado.
