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Our People

Dr Katherine Maxwell

Fellow, Visiting Fellow

Associate WSP

Global Centre on Healthcare and Urbanisation

DPhil (Oxford); MSc, BSc (Edinburgh)

Dr Katherine Maxwell currently works as an Associate at WSP where she leads the Net Zero Cities team, advising cities across the world on their net zero strategies. In August, she was nominated as a COP26 Climate Resilience Fellow by the COP Universities Network and Cambridge Zero and she is representing GCHU at COP26 in Glasgow. Katherine also currently works for an innovative data driven start-up, Kooling, as their Chief Climate Scientist, which aims to help companies reduce their transport emissions.

Previously, Katherine was Senior Manager, Climate Action Planning, at C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. In this role, she provided expert technical assistance across the climate action planning process directly to cities in Africa, China, Latin American and South East Asia ensuring plans align with the Paris Agreement objectives. She represented C40 Cities on the UN-HABITAT’s Climate Action Planning board and was previously on the board of the Global Centre on Healthcare and Urbanisation.

Prior to joining C40, Katherine was Innovation Manager for the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (University of Edinburgh) where she was responsible for the management of a variety of European funded climate-related projects working with directly with organisations and cities. She was an invited Researcher at the London School of Economics on the New Climate Economy report, has run her own consultancy ‘Urban Transitions’ that provided low carbon urban development and innovation. Katherine has held Visiting Researcher positions at UC in Chile, working with municipalities on their disaster risk reduction planning.

Katherine holds a BSc in Geography and an MSc in Environmental Sustainability from the University of Edinburgh and was the first person to successfully complete her DPhil in Sustainable Urban Development from the University of Oxford.