Laurian will help support ANCR’s holistic approach to community resilience through benchmarking
Washington, D.C. – On July 22, 2023 the Alliance for National & Community Resilience (ANCR) welcomed Professional Water Resource Engineer and resilience leader, Laurian Farrell, to its board of directors. As a board member, Laurian will work with ANCR to help continue the development of community benchmarks that allow local leaders to easily assess and improve their resilience across all functions of a community.
Laurian has worked in the private, public and philanthropic sectors for over 20 years, focusing on equity, urban resilience and risk management. After serving as the Chief Flood Duty Officer during an extreme rainfall event in Toronto, Canada in 2013, Laurian began to look for ways to better include communities in conversations around climate risk. This led to her move to New York City in 2019 to join the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities and to subsequently become a founding member of the Resilient Cities Network as Regional Director for North America and Global Director of Knowledge Transformation.
“Laurian has been a strong voice in advancing holistic approaches to resilience at the local level through her work with 100 Resilient Cities and the Resilient Cities Network. We are excited to have her insights contributing to ANCR’s mission,” said ANCR Chair Evan Reis.
Laurian also is a founding member of the Black Environmentalist Alliance in Toronto, Canada. In early 2023, Laurian created Ten Thousand People – which seeks to explore, support and enhance our individual capacity to impact the long-term future of the planet’s population.
“In our daily lives, we navigate intricate, interlinked systems that profoundly influence our health and well-being. While disasters like floods and pandemics spotlight infrastructure vulnerabilities, achieving genuine resilience demands holistic action – preventing acute failures while addressing systemic inequities, technical gaps and community-driven solutions,” said Laurian. “ANCR provides essential resources to guide communities in bridging theory and practice, scrutinizing system interconnections, and ultimately enhancing community resilience. I am thrilled to be a member of ANCR’s Board and aim to contribute my perspective as an engineer and urban resilience practitioner to advance this important mission.”
ANCR was founded by the International Code Council and the U.S. Resiliency Council (USRC) to understand and improve the resilience of communities using Community Resilience Benchmarks. To date, ANCR has released three benchmarks that cover key requirements aimed at increasing the resiliency of communities and has completed piloting of those benchmarks with Martinsville, Virginia and Oakland Park, Florida.
To learn more about ANCR, the Community Resilience Benchmarks and how you can provide your support, click here.
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About the Alliance for National & Community Resilience
The Alliance for National & Community Resilience, a member of the International Code Council Family of Companies, is a coalition of public and private entities working to create the nation’s first whole-community resilience benchmark.