Jessica Hellmann

Climate change ecologist and director of the Institute on the Environment, Jessica Hellmann is a Keynote Speaker for the Summit Session 2 on October 9, at 10am central time.

Jessica Hellmann is the Director of the Institute on Environment at the University of Minnesota, where she holds the Ecolab Environment Research Chair. As director, she provides overall strategic leadership for the Institute, an internationally recognized organization working to solve grand environmental challenges, while promoting interdisciplinary research, teaching and leadership across the university and engaging external partners and stakeholders.

She is also the Russell M. and Elizabeth M. Bennett Chair in Excellence in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior. Her research examines adaptation and vulnerability of biological species to climate change. Hellmann earned her Ph.D. in biology from Stanford University and served as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Biodiversity Research.

She is an alumna of Stanford’s Leopold Environmental Leadership Program and a recipient of a career enhancement fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.