Shanna N. McClain

Dr. Shanna N. McClain is the NASA Earth Science Divisions Global Partnerships Manager and the Lead for Risk Reduction and Resilience. She leads partnerships with a number of partners, including Google, Microsoft, Mercy Corps, and Conservation International. She also works to define NASA's role in resilience through the development of programming that considers fragile and crisis-affected areas and identifies opportunities to integrate Earth observation data into humanitarian action, and to bolster science-informed decision making. She is interested in the intersection of science and policy, particularly concerning the role remote sensing technologies can play in enhancing the collective understanding of systemic vulnerability and exposure.

Shanna is also a Visiting Scholar with the Environmental Law Institute, where she provides research, policy analysis, and decision support to issues on environmental migration and displacement, and environmental conflict and peacebuilding. She continues to work extensively with the Joint UN Environment/UN OCHA Environment Unit, focused on the integration of environmental considerations in sudden-onset and protracted humanitarian crises.

Shanna holds a PhD in Environmental Resources & Policy from Southern Illinois University. Her doctoral research examined the challenges of integrating three science and policy priorities – climate change adaptation, response to disasters, and resilience – into multilevel governance frameworks of international river basins.