Kelly Wanser

Kelly Wanser is an American technologist and climate activist. She is most known for her support for research into climate intervention technologies to understand their potential as “emergency medicine” for global warming, including a 2019 TED talk.
Wanser is the founder and executive director of SilverLining, a nonprofit organization that works that works to advance policy and research on near-term climate risks and responses. In October 2020, SilverLining announced a fund to support research in approaches to increasing the reflection of sunlight from the atmosphere (“solar climate intervention”), the only fund of its kind in the world, providing $3m in grants to U.S. and international teams.
In 2008, while while working in the technology sector, Wanser met scientists Ken Caldeira, Steve Schneider, John Latham and others who educated her on climate change and the possibility of cooling climate by reflecting sunlight through dispersing particles to increase the reflection of sunlight from the atmosphere and clouds. During this period, she was part of a small community of early pioneers in the field and coined the term Marine Cloud Brightening to describe the potential to increase the reflectivity of low-lying marine clouds by injecting them with aerosols. As linked from "Geoengineering: Innovation, Research, and Technology", 115th US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology Hearing, November 8, 2017
In 2009, volunteering her time while working in the technology sector, Wanser co-founded the Marine Cloud Brightening Project at the University of Washington, hosting the first meetings of collaborators in Seattle and Edinburgh and securing a small amount of research funding.
In 2017, Wanser testified before the United States House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in a hearing called by Republican legislators known to dispute climate change science. The hearing was subsequently described as an unusual “rational discussion on climate change” by the committee. Wanser continued to work with research teams, congressional offices and science agencies to identify research priorities.
In 2018 Wanser founded SilverLining, a science-based policy and advocacy organization, to advance research in options to address near-term climate risk, where she helped advance a study by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and funding and legislative proposals in the U.S. Congress. 
In 2018, Wanser also joined the Board of Biocarbon Engineering, now known as Dendra Systems, as its first Director. Operating in the UK and Australia, the company uses data, AI, drones and other technologies to restore and manage native ecosystems.
In 2019 Wanser spoke at the 2019 TEDSummit. In her talk, entitled “Emergency Medicine for our Climate Fever”, she characterized current climate mitigation efforts as “a slow-moving solution to a fast moving problem” and encouraged research to “understand our options” for climate intervention technologies.
 
Previously, she served as an advisor to Ocean Conservancy on applying advanced analytical methods to understanding ocean-climate risk. She also served as an advisor to the Laser Inertial Fusion Energy (LIFE) Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and is a member of the President’s Circle of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. 
After a short period of time in corporate strategy consulting, Wanser spent many years as an entrepreneur and executive in the field of IT infrastructure, founding and leading a sequence of companies in email, security and networking. Her first company, epidemic.com, ran a widely panned Superbowl ad in 2000. 
She is the author of over 20 patents.
Wanser received a BA in Economics and Philosophy from Boston College, and studied Philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford. She served as a volunteer lecturer in economics and philosophy at St. John's College, Belize.
The daughter of a career salesman and a social worker, Wanser grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah and Fort Worth, Texas, in a family that fostered children and sponsored a refugee family from Cambodia. In 1986, her parents adopted a 2-year-old son from Mexico, James Francisco Wanser, who was killed in a car accident at the age of 19, leaving behind two daughters, who are central to Wanser’s family life.
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Category:American chief technologists
Category:American environmentalists
Category:Climate activists
Category:Boston College alumni
Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford
Category:American people