Billy Fleming is the Wilks Family Director of the Ian L. McHarg Center in the Weitzman School of Design. and a senior fellow with Data for Progress. His fellowship with Data for Progress has focused on the built environment impacts of climate change and resulted most prominently in the publication of low-carbon public housing policy briefs tied to the “Green New Deal for Public Housing Act” introduced in 2019. In his role at the McHarg Center, Billy is co-editor of the forthcoming book An Adaptation Blueprint (Island Press, 2020), co-editor and co-curator of the book and now internationally-traveling exhibit Design With Nature Now (Lincoln, 2019), and author of the forthcoming Drowning America: The Nature and Politics of Adaptation (Penn Press, expected 2021). Billy is also the lead author of the recently published and widely acclaimed “The 2100 Project: An Atlas for the Green New Deal.” He is also a co-author of the Indivisible Guide (2016).

His writing on climate, disaster, and design has also been published in The Guardian, The Atlantic, CityLab, Dissent Magazine, Houston Chronicle, Jacobin, Places Journal, and Science for the People Magazine, and he’s frequently asked to weigh in on the infrastructure and built environment implications of climate change, as well as candidate and congressional climate plans, by major climate reporters and congressional staff. His research has been supported by grants from the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, William Penn Foundation, and by a variety of sponsors in the design and building industry.

Prior to joining Penn, he worked as a landscape architect, city planner, organizer, and, later, in the Obama Administration’s White House Domestic Policy Council. He holds a bachelor of landscape architecture (University of Arkansas), master of community and regional planning (University of Texas), and a doctorate of city and regional planning (University of Pennsylvania).

Musonda is currently the head of the UN Environment’s Terrestrial Ecosystems Programme and was previously the coordinator for UNEP’s Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) Programme within the Climate Change Adaptation team.  Her responsibilities include providing technical expertise to governments globally, developing appropriate policy dialogue, guidance and other technical/programmatic support.  This currently the UNEP lead for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) for terrestrial ecosystems.  Musonda, a Zambian national, received her BSc. Ed degree at the University of Zambia and her PhD at University College London in wetland conservation and hydrology.

From 1996 until October 1998 she worked for the Zambian government at the Environmental Council of Zambia as a field biologist, focusing on wetlands and invasive species in Zambian freshwater ecosystems.  In 1998 she moved to Switzerland to work with Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, 1971) for a year and a half – as the assistant to the Regional Coordinator for Africa.  She later joined WWF International in 2000, as a programme officer within the Global Freshwater Programme.  She worked briefly at WWF-UK office following her completion of her PhD before moving to the WWF Eastern Africa Regional Programme Office in February 2007.  She worked as the Freshwater Regional Programme Coordinator based in Nairobi, Kenya, until October 2008.

Musonda is author of several papers, has presented at various conferences on freshwater/water-related/invasive species issues in Africa and also an avid Environmental Blogger.  She also participated as a contributing author in the Inland Waters Chapter of the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment.  Her research interests include water resources management, climate change adaptation, gender, protected area management and invasive species.  In February 2008, Musonda led an expedition that climbed Rwenzori Mountain in Uganda to study the glacial recession in the mountain and the impact on water resources in the Nile River system.