She leads the ‘Act to Adapt’ process, facilitating Somerset communities to create bespoke Climate Adaptation Plans. Her work focuses on helping local areas prepare for and respond to climate impacts like flooding, drought, and wildfire. Through community workshops and consultations, she facilitates the development of Climate Adaptation Plans that protect both people and wildlife. She collaborates with communities, farmers, landowners, local authorities and experts to implement adaptive strategies, such as natural flood management and resilient habitat creation. By combining environmental expertise with community-driven approaches, Somerset Wildlife Trust is working to build a network of climate-adapted communities and ecosystems across Somerset.

Pete leads the Arup Belfast – Energy, Water and Resources team.  He is a Chartered Civil Engineer with more than 20 years industry experience, designing and delivering major transport schemes and also water engineering including blue/green infrastructure, and energy including innovative hydrogen, and battery storage projects.  Pete is a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and is Infrastructure Sectoral Lead for the Climate NI Steering Group.

Emer O’Connell has worked for over two decades on environment and public health issues, developing expertise in research, policy and operational delivery at national, regional and local levels. She is an NHS-trained Consultant in Public Health, a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and a member of the FPH Climate and Health Committee. She is currently the lead for Environment and Resilience with the Greater London Authority Group’s Public Health Units where she provides public health advice to support health equity in London’s climate, environment and resilience policies and programmes. She was the Head of Extreme Events and Health Protection for the UK Health Security Agency from 2018 to 2022, leading the national public health response to extreme events as well as lead for the National Adaptation Programme for the organisation. She has extensive expertise in heat-health and is an advisor to the WHO-WMO Global Heat Health Information Network. Emer is also an Honorary Associate Professor with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and has a PhD in Public Health and Population Science, an MSc in Environmental Technology and an MSc in Public Health.

Laura Pando Martínez, is a culture and climate expert practitioner and the Managing Director of Julie’s Bicycle, an international non-profit uniting culture, creativity and climate action to drive change. With extensive experience across the cultural and public sectors, Laura has supported over a thousand creative organisations and local governments throughout the UK and Europe to act on climate and become more resilient. During her time at Climate KIC, Laura served as the Co-Coordinator of Pathways2Resilience, a 30 million project supporting the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change. She led on the design of a learning programme to drive just transformational adaptation, helping 100 European Regions and Communities to become resilient by 2030. Earlier in her career, Laura worked to embed sustainable practice into large live-music events such as the iconic Reading, Leeds and Latitude festivals. Her expertise spans systems change and innovation, collaborative learning design and sensemaking, place-based and culture-based climate mitigation and resilience strategies.

Miljenko Sedlar is a climate policy and resilience expert with over 20 years of experience at the intersection of EU institutions, national ministries, and local/regional governments. He currently leads the Climate and Resilience Sector at REGEA, where he oversees climate risk assessments, adaptation planning, and the climate-proofing of infrastructure investments. At the European level, he serves as member of the Working Group on Adaptation at DG REGIO and contributes to DG CLIMA’s adaptation processes,. He is also the Coordinator of the AdaptationHubs project and founder of the Croatian NECP Dialogue Platform, a national multi-level governance mechanism aligning local and regional climate action with national and EU frameworks. With a strong background in policy, finance, and technical project development, Miljenko bridges strategic vision with delivery of resilient, EU-aligned climate action.