Amelia VanderLaan

Amelia VanderLaan is a former U.S. diplomat with more than a decade of service in the State Department. As a core member of the Department’s permanent climate negotiations office—the Office of Global Change—she led U.S. adaptation policy globally and served as the lead officer for East Asia and the Pacific. She oversaw more than $60 million in adaptation funding. VanderLaan left government in 2025 pivoting as the State Department eliminated the U.S. climate negotiations team. Now at Harvard Kennedy School, she focuses on scaling adaptation and resilience initiatives. Originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico, she served overseas in Cyprus, Canada, Poland and was the was the first climate officer for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. She holds a master’s degree from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece and a BA from Smith College. Amelia was a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford and a Fulbright Fellow in Turkey.