Lindsey Allen

A lifelong environmental and human rights advocate, Lindsey Allen has engaged some of the world’s largest companies in cleaning up their environmentally destructive practices while inspiring powerful mobilizations for environmental and social justice.

Lindsey most recently served as Chief Program Officer at Greenpeace USA where she oversaw strategy and climate, forests, oceans, and democracy campaigns. Lindsey previously spent almost a decade with Rainforest Action Network, serving as the Executive Director during a time of significant growth and increased focus on diversity and justice reform. Lindsey began her career as a forest campaigner, working to end destruction of the Amazon rainforest and North American Boreal forest. Motivated by the urgency to accelerate justice and climate action,

Lindsey is deeply committed to protecting forests, lands, and the rights of Indigenous and frontline communities to create a just and liveable future. Lindsey graduated from Humboldt State University with a BA in Anthropology.

Josefina Cobián

Josefina is Program Manager for ClimateWorks’ Global Intelligence team. She co-manages a cross department initiative, the independent Global Stocktake which secretariat resides at ClimateWorks. As part of the Global Intelligence team, Josefina leads the development of new workstreams on climate impacts and the expansion of social, political, and economic work in Latin America and the Caribbean. She also manages exploratory work on AI and digital infrastructure and technologies. 

Josefina has more than 7 years of environmental work experience in government, private, and non-profit sectors in Mexico, Japan, Honduras, Ecuador and the US. Prior to ClimateWorks, she worked on climate change and forest policy as a project manager for the federal Commission of Forestry in Mexico and as an independent consultant with Mexico and Honduras. Additionally, she was a forest policy fellow at the Environmental Defense Fund where she co-wrote a paper published in Forests journal. Josefina holds a Master of Environmental Management degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and an Environmental Engineering degree from ITESO University in Mexico. When not working on climate change issues, she enjoys traveling, exploring the bay area, baking and painting.

Surabi Menon

Dr. Surabi Menon is a leading climate scientist with over 20 years of experience in the field of climate change and vice president of Global Intelligence at ClimateWorks Foundation. She has published over 60 peer-reviewed publications and co-authored the 2007 IPCC report that was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

At ClimateWorks, Surabi’s work supports climate philanthropy by providing a global context for climate mitigation, identifying investment flows, funding gaps, and high-impact investment opportunities. She has helped to co-launch global consortiums such as Camda, a global community of over 30 organizations that seeks to support credible climate action in cities, states, businesses, and investors.

Surabi is currently a member of the advisory council of the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium, the Climate Leadership Initiative, the UN Emissions Gap Report, and the donor steering committee for the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency. She was a charter member of the U.S. EPA’s Science Advisory Board (2012-2018) and a former board director of the Global Buildings Performance Network and the Institute for Industrial Productivity.

Before joining ClimateWorks, Surabi was a staff scientist and leader of the Heat Island Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California. She also started an environmental NGO in India in 2008. Surabi was a climate scientist at Columbia University and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. She has a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science and an MBA in Sustainable Management.

Xiaohua Zhang

Xiaohua is the Senior Director of ClimateWorks’ China Program where he manages the overall operation of the Program and our direct grantmaking to support climate action in China.

Prior to joining ClimateWorks Foundation, he was the senior policy advisor on climate action and cooperation in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, headed the International Cooperation Department of China’s National Centre for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation and served as program officer of UNFCCC secretariat. He started his career as the assistant researcher in Tsinghua University.

He has a Ph.D in nuclear engineering from Tsinghua University.