Climate group hires ex-Biden aide as executive director

Genevieve Maricle, a climate policy expert who served in the Biden and Obama administrations, joined the University of Chicago’s Climate Impact Lab this week as its executive director.

She joins the Climate Impact Lab, part of the university’s Energy Policy Institute, as the research group on Monday announced a new “expanded mission” to identify “where climate adaptations are most needed and what adaptation investments will deliver the greatest benefits to communities.”

Prior to her new role, Maricle served in the Biden administration as the National Security Council’s director of climate policy and director of global development and in senior roles at USAID. She served during the Obama administration as senior policy adviser on sustainable development and climate change to then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power.

She also spent several years at the World Wildlife Fund, including a role as director of climate policy action.

Maricle “is the kind of person the climate crisis demands: someone who understands that the distance between a negotiating table and a flooded village is not as great as it seems, and who has spent her career closing that gap,” said Power, now a professor at Harvard University.