Melanie Gárate

Melanie Gárate is a Senior Associate at the Consensus Building Institute. Through her early career marine ecology research, Melanie was struck by the disproportionate environmental impacts to low-income, Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities, which sparked her passion for environmental justice work. Her work focuses on increasing the resilience of people affected by climate change. She is a 2022 Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis with the OpEd Project in partnership with Yale University.

Prior to CBI, Melanie worked at the Stone Living Lab & Boston Harbor Now, focusing on nature-based approaches to climate resilience. She has also been the Climate Resiliency Manager at the Mystic River Watershed Association, and she has worked at Mass Audubon and the New England Aquarium. Melanie holds an M.S. in Marine Ecology and Climate Change from the University of Rhode Island, where she obtained an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to study mangrove ecology and perform community outreach in Puerto Rico.