Elizabeth Yee is the Executive Vice President, Program Strategy and Chief of Staff at The Rockefeller Foundation. She oversees The Foundation’s portfolio of global programs, leading the advancement of the Foundation’s strategic priorities. Liz also serves as a strategic advisor to The Foundation’s President, Dr. Rajiv Shah. She joined The Rockefeller Foundation in 2019 as Managing Director, Climate and Resilience.
In 2015, Liz joined 100 Resilient Cities, a project sponsored by The Rockefeller Foundation where she held various leadership roles, including Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, Vice President, City Solutions, and Vice President, Resilience Finance. She led the creation of a global platform of 100+ leading non-profit institutions and for-profit enterprises which accelerated and enabled the implementation of resilience projects globally. In response to the growing need to fund and finance urban climate adaptation projects, Liz supported the development and issuance of the first publicly offered Environmental Impact Bond.
Prior to her leadership roles at 100 Resilient Cities, Liz co-led the Public Power and Utilities practice at Barclays Capital. During her seventeen years working in the capital markets at Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and Barclays, she and her team developed, structured, and executed over $30 billion of infrastructure transactions. She has worked on finance solutions that included tax-equity flip structures, commodities and interest rate hedges, catastrophe bonds, and pension financing solutions. Liz is a two-time “Bond Buyer Deal of the Year” awardee for her team’s innovative approaches in structured finance. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and lives in New York City with her husband, two children and dog.
Authored Content
Jun 08 2020 Blog Post Should We Use Covid-19 to Respond to the Climate Emergency? There are two sharply divergent views about the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic for global efforts to tackle climate change. Some policy experts and activists believe we must deprioritize climate action, while others take the view that this moment presents a unique – and perhaps final – window of opportunity to set the world on […]
Feb 24 2020 Blog Post If We Fail on Inequality We Will Also Fail on Climate At the end of January in the mountain resort of Davos, political, corporate, and philanthropic leaders gathered to discuss how they could build a cohesive and sustainable world. The star attraction was a teenager in a hoodie, without title, position or wealth – the young climate activist, Greta Thunberg. She delivered a stark reminder that “our […]
Sep 20 2019 Blog Post Urban Resilience Infrastructure: an Imperative in a Climate Uncertain World Regardless of climate, infrastructure is a basic need for human survival. By definition, infrastructure is the “basic physical and organizational structure needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.” Infrastructure is intended to provide communities with shelter, and serve as an engine to support continued economic growth. But the world’s infrastructure is broken. Despite […]