Ms. Kristen P Patterson, MS, MPH

Kristen P. Patterson is an innovative leader, speaker, and writer focused on finding equitable solutions to global challenges that improve people’s lives. As the inaugural Director of Drawdown Lift at the NGO Project Drawdown, Kristen leads efforts to advance climate solutions that also boost human well-being and alleviate poverty.

Kristen’s service with the Peace Corps in rural Niger deeply influenced her career, one centered on the nexus of community-led development, public health, and environmental conservation. Prior to joining Project Drawdown, Kristen directed the People, Health, Planet program at Population Reference Bureau, where she led research and fostered dialogue about holistic programs that simultaneously address human and planetary health needs. Kristen was a founding member of the Africa Program at The Nature Conservancy, where she helped design the Tuungane Project, which continues today and focuses on healthier families, fisheries, and forests in western Tanzania. She also has worked in eastern Madagascar as a USAID Population-Environment Fellow and conducted and published research on farmer-herder conflict resolution in Niger.

Kristen earned a mid-career MPH with a focus in women’s and reproductive health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she was a merit-based Sommer Scholar. She also has a MS in Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development and a Certificate in African Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was a Doris Duke Fellow. She is an alumna of the University of California, Berkeley Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program.

She co-authored a chapter on Population, Consumption, Equity, and Rights in the book Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves (2020). She has presented at numerous international conferences and engaged with the media around the topics of climate change, reproductive health, environmental conservation, gender equality, and planetary health. She is focused on holistic approaches to solving global challenges such as climate change and poverty, particularly for women and girls.

Sub-specialties:
Climate change solutions, climate-poverty nexus, climate-reproductive health nexus, gender equality, population-health-environment nexus, climate mitigation, climate adaptation, climate loss and damage, poverty alleviation, renewable energy in Africa, community-led sustainable development, climate-SDG nexus