Tailwind Futures co-hosted The Adaptation Forum with The Resiliency Company, Resilience Investments and Virta Ventures and the generous sponsorship of Foley Hoag on Monday September 21, 2025, during Climate Week NYC.
Over 700 people expressed interest in attending, and the room was packed!
Click here to see the full photo archive.
The Adaptation Forum: Session Highlights
Thank you for joining us at The Adaptation Forum during Climate Week NYC 2025. With 225+ participants, we explored what adaptation and resilience mean in practice — and why this is both an urgent challenge and a powerful opportunity.
Keynote — Alison Smart (Probable Futures)
- “We are living in the first period of mass destabilization.”
- Climate change = instability → demands new resources, frameworks, and expectations.
- Adaptation is local, systemic, rooted in literacy, tied to mitigation, and ultimately hopeful.
- See the report on the state of adaptation and resilience
Climate Risk & Resilience — Mekala Krishnan & Kanmani Chockalingam
- Malawi lost 66% of food production, Germany floods caused $8.2B losses, and Greece tourism fell 76% due to wildfires.
- Four systems at risk: human, social, natural, physical capital.
- Solutions include reducing vulnerability, limiting exposure, disaster support, and risk transfer.
- Funding gap: $200–400B globally.
- 📌 “Failing to prepare means preparing to fail.”
Lightning Talks
- Daniel Kaniewski (Former FEMA): FEMA’s evolving role in resilience.
- Jeff Hébert (HR&A): Case studies in New Orleans and Houston showed how resilient infrastructure prevents flooding and revitalizes communities.
- Janika McFeely (JLL): CRE faces risks of asset erosion, rising insurance, business disruption — “Decisions made today will last 50+ years.”
Built Environment Panel
- Ameet Konkar (Resilience Investments): Scaling decarbonization across 10M+ homes; resilient markets emerging in the Midwest/Northeast.
- Lindsay Brugger (Urban Land Institute): “Resilience is valuable now.” → not just risk avoidance, but opportunity creation.
Post-Break Insights — Adaptation in 2025
- Adaptation must be local, iterative, and continuous.
- Selling adaptation requires clear metrics.
- Dustin Bramell: Resilience must be culturally relevant → reduce barriers, make it accessible.
- Daniel Zarrilli: NYC post-Sandy shows innovative funding pools, but adaptation has limits without emissions reduction.
- Olivia Albretch: FC Barcelona shows how sports and culture can anchor climate resilience through creative financing.
Capital & Investment Perspectives
- Insurance markets are repricing assets now; some will be stranded, others may overperform in resilient regions.
- Philanthropy = only ~2% of flows; private capital must step up.
- Climate migration = dominant human challenge of the 21st century.
📌 “If my company can operate in a complex environment, it can keep delivering value and innovation.” — Jay, Lightsmith Group
Innovation Spotlights
- Fractal (Emma Fuller): Regenerative farmland as a resilience investment.
- Futureproof Tech (Alex Gelber): AI-based climate risk pricing in insurance.
- Sand Tech (Fred Swaniker): AI for disaster response and wildfire prevention.
- DexMat (Bryan Hassin): “We cannot adapt to the climate of tomorrow with the materials of yesterday.”
Investor Panel — Jane Woodward, Beth Foster Chao, Peter Ortez
- Adaptation is both necessity and opportunity.
- Resilience investing must be systemic, transparent, and scalable.
- 📌 “Transparency and systems thinking can create a real marketplace for resilience.”
Key Takeaways
- Resilience must be embedded early in infrastructure, real estate, and community design.
- Private capital + innovation are essential to fill the funding gap needed for adaptation efforts.
- Technology, data, and materials are redefining what’s possible including utilizing AI, creating new ways of using land or optimizing for new and innovative building materials.
- Messaging and literacy matter — communities must be included in the conversation, not just after disasters.
- Adaptation is inseparable from mitigation and the climate crisis will require having mitigation and adaptation efforts work in tandem.