This year’s discussion at Monticello took place on October 21 and welcomed Kenneth Brill, Catherine Novelli, Pamela White, and Michael Blaakman to examine, “Diplomacy and the Environment.” Vice President for Programs at Climate Central and former Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change at the State Department, Karen Florini delivered the keynote address.
Karen Florini, the keynote speaker, is Vice President for Programs at Climate Central, where she oversees Climate Central’s program initiatives and engages with strategic partners. Prior to joining Climate Central in 2017, Karen served as Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change at the State Department. Previously she spent more than two decades at Environmental Defense Fund, working both on environmental health and on climate change. She earned a law degree at Harvard, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Environmental Law Review, but now regards herself as a recovering lawyer.
Michael Blaakman, Assistant Professor of History and David L. Rike Preceptor in History at Princeton University, also gave a historical perspective on Thomas Jefferson’s environmentalism in international context.
