Light Breakfast

We open the day with a keynote to bring attendees into a shared understanding: around how the future will look different from the past.

From there we will have a presentation focused on how we will pay for this new future by framing the discussion around the changing federal landscape while emphasizing that state and local governments are not powerless actors. Instead, they are uniquely positioned to shape the resilience economy if they begin embedding resilience into core financial and policy decision-making. This conversation is intended to challenge conventional government thinking and encourage participants to think beyond grants and emergency management toward structural finance, land policy, housing systems, insurance, and economic development.

A panel of public sector representatives along with those who have advised and supported jurisdictions around resilience projects will discuss the very real challenges of elevating resilience as a focal point amongst the growing list of competing interests local and state governments have to content with in this new environment.

Even with an acknowledged increased physical risk in a community, it is difficult to identify a starting point. Led by Shayne Kavanagh of the Government Finance Officers Association and Matt Posner of the Resiliency Company, we will offer a new shared framework that establishes credibility around sizing and scoping of risk and communicating those issues to a community.

This is an entry point into resilience finance. The focus is not simply on climate risk modeling, but on helping governments establish a foundational understanding of expected annualized financial losses and future fiscal exposure. Discussions on this topic often fail because governments struggle to quantify the financial implications of future risk in ways that can compete against other political and budgetary priorities.

Hear success stories from public sector representatives from all over the nation describe how they addressed a resilience issue in their jurisdiction.

Network with other attendees.

The first workshop is designed as a public-sector-led exercise focused on helping jurisdictions begin thinking through resilience challenges in a collaborative environment. Participants will be seated at tables intentionally structured to include a mix of public-sector representatives and various resilience “archetypes.” Prior to the conference, public-sector attendees will be asked to come prepared with a resilience-related challenge or problem facing their community.

We will serve lunch on the premises for all attendees.

This panel is intended to challenge the historical understanding of housing policy as being primarily focused on zoning, permitting, and certifications. The discussion will explore how state and local housing policy is increasingly becoming central to resilience outcomes, particularly around insurance affordability, retrofit financing, rebuilding standards, long-term affordability, and access to resilient housing stock.

The panel will examine how housing finance systems, lenders, developers, insurers, and governments can begin aligning around resilience-oriented housing policy and investment strategies.

The summit returns to a series of private-sector lightning talks. These presentations are intended to demonstrate how private-sector actors are already engaging in resilience work and where new opportunities for partnership may exist. Speakersinclude representatives from insurance, finance, development, technology, infrastructure, or other sectors that are helping solve resilience-related problems in innovative ways.

Unlike the first workshop, this session will be more private-sector-led and will focus on unlocking flows of capital. Table quarterbacks will help facilitate conversations where private-sector and non-government participants explain how they engage within resilience systems, what motivates their involvement, where incentives align or fail, and how partnerships with governments can be structured more effectively.

The final substantive session of the summit will be led by Ben McAdams, CEO and founder of Putting Assets to Work to focus specifically on land policy and resilience.

This session will examine land as one of the most important but underutilized tools available to governments in resilience planning and financing. The conversation will explore how governments can better leverage public land, land-use authority, redevelopment strategy, and long-term planning to support resilience outcomes while also creating broader economic and community value.

We will end the day with read-outs from each table and make some announcements around the Resilient America program going into the second half of the year.