Benjamin Strauss

Dr. Benjamin Strauss was elected President and CEO of Climate Central in April 2018 and also serves as Chief Scientist. He is author of numerous scientific papers and reports on sea-level rise and is architect of the Surging Seas suite of maps, tools and visualizations. Strauss has testified before the U.S. Senate and presented to state and local elected officials, and his past work has been cited by the White House and the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Surging Seas has earned more than 100 million page views, and with Strauss’s research has generated more than 10,000 appearances in U.S. and international publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, AP, Reuters, Bloomberg, China Daily and The Hindu. He has appeared as an expert on national network news, nationally syndicated radio and documentary television.

In earlier roles at Climate Central, Dr. Strauss served as Chief Scientist, Vice President for Sea Level and Climate Impacts, interim Executive Director and COO. He was a founding board member of Grist.org and the Environmental Leadership Program. Strauss co-organized the 1994 Campus Earth Summit, and consulted to the Nathan Cummings Foundation on higher education and the environment. He holds a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University, an M.S. in Zoology from the University of Washington, and a B.A. in Biology from Yale University.