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On February 4-5, 2025, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), the Network for Engineering With Nature (N-EWN), and the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) Center for Coastal Climate Resilience is convening a national forum focused on the practice of nature-based solutions.
At Jacobs, we’re passionate about driving positive change for our planet and our people. As a global leader in sustainability and environmental solutions, we’re responding to worldly challenges — from decarbonizing our cities to protecting our environment, we create climate-resilient and adaptive solutions to improve quality of life for all our communities and their inhabitants.
Our industry-leading teammates will be in Irvine, California to elevate nature-based solutions and innovations to complex environmental challenges.
We’re shaping a greener, more sustainable tomorrow.
Meet the team headed to Irvine
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Dr. Devyani Kar, Principal Resilience Scientist
Devyani Kar has over 20 years of experience working in the climate-change mitigation and adaptation field to build future resilience for coastal communities nationwide. She has led numerous multimillion-dollar coastal restoration and risk reduction projects that incorporate natural and nature-based features (NNBF) to mitigate risks and provide multiple co-benefits. She has supervised interdisciplinary teams of planners, engineers, and scientists to conduct climate risk and vulnerability assessments - both for the natural and the built environment, leading to the formulation of cost-effective adaptation strategies for clients that include municipal, state, federal governments and businesses.
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Chrissy Thom, Global Environmental Market Director
Chrissy Thom is a senior executive spearheading a global approach to sustainable infrastructure development. She brings a diverse career background, including strategic growth, business operations, global program management and digital transformation. She is passionate about inclusion and developing people in new ways that benefit our clients and communities.
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Chris Allen, Regenerative + Nature-based Solutions Global Principal
Chris Allen has been a leader in sustainability for more than 30 years, bringing environmental and economic solutions to our clients and the world, building social and ecological value into every project. An early innovator in Biomimicry and Engineering with Nature, Chris now brings our clients the latest, most advanced ideas in sustainable infrastructure in his role as Jacobs Regenerative + Nature-based Solutions Global Principal.
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Luce Bassetti, Coastal Resilience Director – Americas
Luce Bassetti is a coastal and port specialist with more than 19 years of experience managing regional and international coastal projects. She started her career with Jacobs as a coastal modeler, working on projects in North and South America and across Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East. She later led Jacobs’ U.S. Coastal Resiliency Program before being appointed Americas Coastal Resilience Director, responsible for developing and driving the growth strategy for Jacobs’ coastal resilience sector in the Americas.
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Kira Zender, Federal & Environmental Market Solutions - Climate Action and Resilience Lead
Kira Zender is an environmental planner with more than 20 years of experience leading environmental and military master planning projects. She is the Climate Action Resilience Lead, setting the climate resilience strategy for the Federal and Environmental business unit at Jacobs. She also serves as the Program Manager for the Engineering With Nature® projects at Jacobs, overseeing innovative NbS projects in Hawaii, the Southeast and the desert Southwest.
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Emily Reese Moody, Sustainability Director - Certifications & Compliance
Emily Reese Moody is an established sustainability specialist with over 18 years of planning and sustainability integration experience in public and private sector projects including facilities management work for the DoD, DoS, DoE, GSA, and other Federal entities, as well as extensive experience with commercial and higher education clients. Her current focus is on sustainable design integration, sustainable building assessments, development of client-specific best practices, and third-party certification programs such as LEED, WELL, Guiding Principles, ParkSmart, Living Building Challenge and Fitwel project certification oversight.
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Jeremy Thomas, Senior Water Resources Specialist
Jeremy Thomas has 23 years of experience as a project manager, fluvial geomorphologist, environmental scientist, planner, and ecological designer, working to enhance and restore natural ecosystem processes in degraded landscapes. He applies a holistic systems approach toward water resources projects, fully integrating ecological and biological processes with fluvial geomorphology and water resource planning and engineering principles.
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Laura Hoffacker, Sustainability Consultant
Laura Hoffacker has over a decade of experience developing sustainability strategies across multiple markets. She works with lead engineers, designers and other subject matter experts at Jacobs on Net Zero and Nature Positive business development, project delivery and corporate strategy. Laura has an MBA from Presidio Graduate School where she focused on ESG and climate action strategies that help move the needle forward on creating a more just, livable future.
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Armin Munevar, Global Technologist - Water & Climate Resilience
Armin Munevar is Jacobs' global technology leader for water and climate resilience services. His experience includes 27 years of developing and applying climate and hydrological models, watershed-scale hydrology, river-reservoir operations, conjunctive use evaluations and integrated water resource planning studies. Armin focuses on the intersection of strategic planning, technical excellence and communication to achieve durable solutions to some of today's most pressing water resilience challenges.
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Enrique Lopezcalva, Global Technologist - Water Resources & Resilience
A recognized expert in water resources planning and resilience, Enrique Lopezcalva has 28 years of experience in the water industry, with a focus on climate change adaptation, integrated water resources planning, water re-sources systems analysis and risk analysis. Enrique serves as technical lead and project manager for projects with sustainability outcomes and multi-objective solutions. Enrique has lead multiple planning projects for water supply and water resources management, risk assessment, and is an expert on systems modeling and development of tools to quantify benefits of management and project solutions. He has extensive experience on projects that involve nature-based solutions and multi-benefit projects.
Our nature positive solutions
Each of our solutions can be a gateway to including and contributing to nature positive outcomes.
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Natural capital
The world’s stocks of natural resources, including geology, soil, air, water, and all living organisms. These resources provide ecosystem services that are essential for human survival and economic activity.
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Engineering with Nature
The intentional alignment of natural and engineering processes to efficiently andsustainably deliver economic, environmental and social benefits through collaboration. Jacobs is a member of the Network for Engineering with Nature and has partnered with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center on thought leadership in this field.
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Nature-based solutions
Natural or nature-based landscape features that provide engineering, economic, social and environmental benefits, including terrestrial and blue carbon solutions for offsetting.
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Ecological connectivity
The unimpeded movement of species and the flow of natural processes that sustain natural life on Earth. Examples include corridor establishment and restoration.
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Biomimicry
Learning from and then emulating nature’s forms, processes and ecosystems to create more sustainable designs. Jacobs has signed a strategic alliance teaming agreement with Biomimicry 3.8 (B3.8), a global consulting and innovation firm specializing in nature-based solutions and nature-inspired designs. Biomimicry is an innovation methodology informed by 3.8 billion years of natural evolution and provides a unique platform for the development of sustainable and regenerative designs.
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Regenerative design
An approach to designing systems or solutions that aims to work with or mimic natural ecosystem processes for returning energy from less usable to more usable forms.
Explore some of our projects
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Restoring Oyster Reefs in partnership with The Nature Conservancy
Sharing a passion for natural infrastructure as a viable way to increase coastal and climate change resilience, The Nature Conservancy and Jacobs collaborate on the Pensacola East Bay Oyster Habitat Restoration Project.
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Tyndall Air Force Base Coastal Resilience
After Tyndall Air Force Base was hit with a Category 5 hurricane, resulting in damage to 100% of its assets, they embarked on a rebuilding program that focused on creating a resilient, sustainable and smart Installation of the Future leveraging a “system of systems” approach. Joining the emergency response effort, we pioneered Presidential award-winning coastal nature-based resilience solutions that reduce coastal flood risks and created important social and environmental benefits.
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Steart Coastal Management
One of the U.K.'s largest coastal management schemes, Steart is an example of working with nature to restore habitats, mitigate flood risk and respond to climate change.
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Wildlife Crossing Pilot Program
Jacobs worked with our Department of Transportation clients across the U.S. to secure grants through the Federal Highway Administration’s Wildlife Crossing Pilot Program.
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Windara Reef Restoration
As the lead engineer for The Nature Conservancy, Jacobs developed the numerical modelling and the engineering design for the construction of the 20-hectare Stage 2 reef expansion at Windara Reef on the Yorke Peninsular in South Australia.
You might be interested in...
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Biomimicry from Sustainability to Regeneration
After 3.8 billion years of evolution, nature already has solutions to our most pressing challenges. Discover how biomimicry — the innovation and design practice that learns from nature — can transform the built environment into a showcase for a regenerative world.
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Engineering with Nature - Supporting Mission Resilience And Infrastructure Value
The Department of Defense (DoD) faces a complex set of challenges, many of which relate to developing and sustaining the infrastructure needed for mission resilience. This book aims to support a conversation and collaboration across DoD and its partners about the use of natural infrastructure to support readiness and resilience.
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Nature Positive and Net Zero: The Ecology of Real Estate
The real estate industry has a large impact on land use both but has not often considered biodiversity or ecosystem services. This new report, developed in partnership with the Urban Land Institute, highlights key global market drivers for preserving and enhancing biodiversity for developers and owners, and includes best practices for implementing nature positive solutions at multiple scales.
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