Apolitical’s 26 Resilience Leaders of 2026

Since taking office, and now in a second term after re-election in 2026, Chadchart fast-tracked the city's Urban Heat Management Plan, creating 2,806 drinking-water points across all 50 districts, 110 cooling zones in 48 major parks plus 242 more in pocket parks, and 255 air-conditioned "BKK Cooling Centers" in schools, health centers and district offices.

He's paired this with stronger building codes, localised heat mapping, a dedicated heat-resilience fund, and parallel flood management given Bangkok's sinking geography. The World Bank has cited the programme as a resilience model for tropical megacities.

As Prefect of Gironde and the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, Sophie ordered the evacuation of the entire Cap Ferret peninsula and swathes of western Bordeaux, moving roughly 220,000 people, France's largest displacement since the Second World War, then phased their safe return within days as conditions allowed.

Her plain-spoken public briefings through the crisis (she opened the summer's safety plan promising to act "with humility, because the forest demands it, but with determination") were widely credited with holding public trust together.

As Commander of Spain's Military Emergency Unit (UME), Francisco was appointed Operational Director when Spain declared its first-ever Emergency of National Interest in July 2026, unifying national, regional and military resources under a single chain of command across the Ávila and Madrid fire complexes, the model Spain has built and refined since UME's founding in 2005.

As strategic lead for climate at the Copernicus Climate Change Service, Samantha's monitoring confirmed Western Europe's warmest June-July on record in 2026 and documented how record-low soil moisture across France, Spain and Germany created a self-reinforcing heat-drought spiral, evidence since cited directly by national governments and the EU's wildfire strategy.

As Athens' first Chief Heat Officer from 2021, Eleni pioneered naming and categorising heatwaves (including "Cerberus" and "Charon" in 2023) to trigger faster emergency response. In June 2022, UN-Habitat and the Atlantic Council named her the world's first Global Chief Heat Officer, spreading the model internationally. She won the 2023 Lawrence C. Nussdorf Urban Leadership Prize and made Politico's 2022 list of the 28 most influential Europeans.

Farwiza founded HAkA in 2012, and its advocacy and litigation won a $26 million court fine against a palm oil concession for illegal burning, and helped halt a dam project that would have flooded elephant habitat. In April 2026, she and HAkA won the Whitley Gold Award to scale community-based protection of Leuser's water catchments, adding to her 2024 Ramon Magsaysay Award.

Carlos has sat on the Brazilian Development Bank's administrative council since January 2023, its first environmental scientist, where he proposed the Restoration Arc. By November 2025 it had mobilised R$2.43 billion against targets of 6 million hectares restored by 2030 and 24 million by 2050, with 12 funding rounds backing 56 projects across 33 Indigenous lands and 81 settlements.

He co-chairs the Science Panel for the Amazon, leads the Amazonia 4.0 bioeconomy project, and campaigned for the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, launched at COP30 with US$6.7 billion pledged and 53 endorsing countries.

"The Amazon forest is very close to a tipping point. Increasing its resilience requires urgent zero deforestation and degradation, and large-scale forest restoration."

As California's Natural Resources Secretary since 2019, Wade personally originated the state's first-of-its-kind $100 million Tribal Nature-Based Solutions Program, launched in 2023 after his own conversations with tribal leaders, funding tribal-led land reacquisition, workforce training and stewardship projects. Under his watch, state funding for tribal-led prescribed burns grew from $1 million to $19 million in a single year.

As Africa's first Chief Heat Officer, appointed in 2021, Eugenia's Market Shade Cover Project installed solar-powered canopies covering 669 square meters across three of Freetown's largest markets, directly benefiting more than 2,300 women vendors. She's separately piloting heat-resistant roofing for the roughly 450,000 people living in the city's informal settlements.

Joshua co-founded the Youth Climate Justice Fund in 2023, which as of mid-2026 has committed over $8.1 million across 115 initiatives in 51 countries, providing flexible, trust-based funding to grassroots groups mainstream funders often can't reach. He previously founded the Green Africa Youth Organization, which helped establish Africa's first Youth Climate Council in 2021.

"Resilience is built when people have the trust, resources and power to navigate uncertainty together. It is not about avoiding disruption, but about investing in the relationships, leadership and collective power needed to adapt and thrive through it."

As CEO of the Quadrature Climate Foundation (QCF), Jess has led the foundation past $1 billion in philanthropic commitments and is actively rebalancing its portfolio, historically weighted toward rapid decarbonisation, to put real weight behind climate adaptation and resilience funding alongside it. She's been a vocal public advocate for what she calls "bouncing forward" rather than merely surviving shocks, and brings nearly two decades of climate work across UK government (BEIS, HM Treasury), the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, and as an IPCC contributing author on climate risk and adaptation in the Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports.

Across three decades in the Senate, Loren authored the Climate Change Act of 2009, the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010, and the People's Survival Fund, a national financing mechanism for local adaptation. As of October 2025, the fund had approved roughly 1.42 billion pesos across 24 local projects nationwide, spanning mangrove rehabilitation, coastal protection and community early-warning systems. UNDRR named her a Global Champion for Resilience in 2015.

As General Director of Kazhydromet since 2020, Danara's agency issued more than 100 flood warnings starting in early March 2024, ahead of floods that displaced roughly 118,000-120,000 people; Kazakhstan itself recorded just 2 deaths despite the scale. She has also overseen modernisation of the country's drought-forecasting equipment and computing capacity, partnered with UNDP and Japan. Her agency also sends out smog and air pollution warnings – particularly important for a country where a third of households still heat with coal.

As Director of UNDP's Resilience Hub for Africa since 2024, Zeynu leads the $6.2 million Groundwater Access Facility, which has installed 20 new boreholes serving 34 health facilities, 59 schools and more than 150,000 people in Ethiopia's Somali region alone, and assembled a $2 billion pipeline of 50 strategic water projects across 8 IGAD countries. Earlier, as deputy director of Ethiopia's refugee agency, he drafted the country's refugee law and a ten-year self-reliance strategy for more than a million refugees.

"Resilience is not simply the ability to withstand crisis; it is the capacity to turn risk into opportunity and build systems that enable people, communities and economies not only to recover, but to transform and prosper."

Mariela became founding CEO of Bushfire Recovery Victoria in 2020, then led its transition into Emergency Recovery Victoria in 2022, a standing agency for recovery from any major emergency. After the October 2022 floods and Bogong landslip, which hit 63 of Victoria's 79 municipalities, her agency delivered a $95 million Flood Recovery Clean-Up Program, distributed more than $24 million in direct emergency relief payments, and provided re-establishment grants of up to $43,850 per uninsured household.

Across four terms as Minister of Water and Irrigation since 2005, most recently since 2023, Raed signed a 30-year, roughly $6 billion concession in January 2025 with a French-led consortium for the Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance Project, a 450-kilometre pipeline feeding what will be the world's second-largest desalination plant, targeting 300 million cubic metres of desalinated water a year by 2029, partly solar-powered. He's also implementing Jordan's 2023-2040 National Water Sector Strategic Plan.

As deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Mete Coban has been supporting Sadiq Khan in delivering flagship policies and actions to protect London and its citizens. These have included, in just the last few months, the city's first ever Clean Rivers and Waterways plan to transform London’s blue spaces over next decade; 5,000 additional street trees in areas most at risk from extreme heat to protect London’s urban forest for generations to come; and against the backdrop of the 70th anniversary of the Clean Air Act, Mete and Sadiq announced £6m for the Mayor’s Air Quality Fund for innovative projects to reduce air pollution.

Kamal has headed UNDRR since May 2024, after leading India's National Disaster Management Authority, where he helped deliver a 'zero casualty' evacuation of roughly 300,000 people ahead of Cyclone Titli. He now formally co-chairs Making Cities Resilient 2030's Global Coordinating Committee and is driving the AI sub-group behind Early Warnings for All, as global multi-hazard warning coverage has reached 119 countries (60%), up 113% over the past decade.

As EU Climate Commissioner, Wopke announced a permanent 300-firefighter rapid reaction force in February 2026, deployable within hours anywhere across the 27-member bloc under the Civil Protection Mechanism and coordinated through the ERCC in Brussels. It was operational in time for a summer that saw France's worst wildfire season on record and Spain declare its first-ever Emergency of National Interest, built on a rescEU firefighting pool that has grown from 236 firefighters in its first year to 777 today.

"I'm honoured to have been named one of Apolitical's 26 Resilience Leaders of 2026.

The climate crisis is already having such a dramatic impact. We need to put all our efforts into cutting emissions and at the same time we need to make our societies and economies more resilient. Being better prepared to withstand the new climatic reality is now an urgent priority."

As European Commissioner for Energy and Housing, Dan is driving the roadmap to end energy imports and fully implement REPowerEU, while pushing through the European Grids Package to build security considerations directly into how energy infrastructure gets planned, alongside a revision of the EU's energy security framework due later this year. When the energy crisis peaked, he urged member states to coordinate storage and demand-reduction measures rather than act unilaterally, warning that fragmented national responses would only deepen the shock. He's paired this with Europe's first-ever affordable housing plan, treating energy resilience and housing stability as connected problems rather than separate briefs.

As head of the China Meteorological Administration, Chen oversees MAZU, an AI-powered early-warning platform reaching more than 40 countries, with fully localised national builds delivered to at least seven, including Pakistan, Ethiopia, the Solomon Islands and Mongolia. In 2026, China announced a five-year plan to extend MAZU to 30 more countries.

As chair of Tajikistan's Committee for Environmental Protection since 2020, Bahodur oversees the national hydromet agency and disaster-risk-reduction platform, covering a country with more than 7,000 glaciers, including Lake Sarez, whose potential collapse threatens an estimated 5 million people across four countries. A new UNESCO-backed early-warning and risk-mapping project is being installed in glacier communities under his portfolio, and Tajikistan hosted the 2025 International Year for the Protection of Glaciers under his watch.

Across roles at the World Resources Institute, the Open Society Foundations and now NRDC, Yamide's advocacy helped move the Loss and Damage Fund from a taboo topic to a reality at COP27 and COP28. The fund now holds roughly $800-822 million in pledges, with about 54% actually paid in, and its board approved a $250 million pilot allocation in 2025, with first disbursements targeted for mid-2026.

As the UK's first female Government Chief Scientific Adviser since 2023, Angela's office co-chaired the government's ACCESS Task Force on Adaptation and Resilience. This year, Dame McLean is driving efforts to put people at the centre of UK climate adaptation and resilience.

As Minister for the Ecological Transition, Sara has overseen Spain's Plan to Improve Resilience to Flooding, an initial €530 million programme funding drainage upgrades, storm tanks and dam safety works in the DANA-hit Júcar region, and is driving the creation of a new State Agency for Civil Protection and Emergencies to coordinate national preparedness and early warning going forward.

Lazard is a geopolitical strategist shaping the emerging field of planetary security. Her work develops transition intelligence for an era in which climate change, ecological disruption and technological acceleration are transforming power, security and the global economy. She focuses particularly on critical minerals, resource competition and the future of geostrategy, translating these shifts into new approaches to climate and nature action. She is founding Transition Intelligence, a European Institute focused on planetary security, is a fellow with the Berggruen Institute and the Imperial War Museum Institute as well as a TED speaker.