Biography

Kristen Averyt is a research professor at UNLV focusing on climate change. She currently serves as the White House Council on Environmental Quality's director for drought and Western resilience.

Averyt has a long record working on different facets of the climate issue including U.S. western water resources, the energy-water nexus, and climate resilience and adaptation. She worked in the US Senate as a NOAA Knauss Fellow and 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, and as a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I Support Unit, 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, but, of her honors, she is most proud of the Girls Scouts of the Sierra Nevada Award for Environmental Leadership. 

Averyt previously served as the Senior Climate Advisor in the Office of the former Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak, where she led climate planning and policy development for the state. She was recently elected to the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Council, is a Senior Policy Fellow of the AMS, and engages in many other service and board activities. She is a former president of the Desert Research Institute and 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 also director of the Western Water Assessment, a NOAA program focused on regional climate issues including drought and the Colorado River.