Bio
Graciela Chichilnisky created and designed the UN carbon market that became international law leading to the creation of the EU Emission Trading System (EU ETS) in 2005. She negotiated and wrote the wording for the carbon market accepted into the Kyoto Protocol at the Convention of the Parties (COP) in Kyoto in December 1997. The Washington Post calls Chichilnisky an “A-List Star” and Time Magazine calls her a “Hero of the Environment”. U.S. Congressman, Jay Inslee (WA, D) wrote that her work is “revolutionary for the international community”. In 2015 Graciela Chichilnisky was selected “2015 CEO of the Year” by IAIR (International Alternative Investment Review) at the Yale Club in New York City, and in 2015 Fast Company Magazine selected her company Global Thermostat “World’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies” in energy. According to Nobel Laureate Professor Edmund Phelps, “The genius of Graciela Chichilnisky is recognized by economists and…she has focused that talent to the dire position facing mankind. Professor Chichilnisky’s achievement…is to show us the way to rescue our future.” Ash Pachauri wrote about Chichilnisky’s “extraordinary achievements and contributions, over decades, to the climate agenda.” A professor at Columbia University, Dr. Chichilnisky was recently a Visiting Professor at Stanford University, and CEO of Global Thermostat. She is currently CEO of Anthrocene Advisors, whose mission is to shepherd companies to successfully navigate financial and technological pathways necessary to reverse our climate crisis.
A world-renowned economist, Chichilnisky is the creator of the BASIC NEEDS concept that was voted by the UN as the main concept of economic development, and of the formal theory of Sustainable Development. She acted in this capacity as Lead US author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) when the Panel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Her pioneering work uses innovative market mechanisms to create Green Capitalism. She acts as a special adviser to several UN organizations and heads of state and was CEO and Co- Founder of Global Thermostat, a company in which she co-invented a “Carbon Negative Technology” that captures CO2 directly from the atmosphere. She previously founded and led three successful companies: FITEL, a financial telecommunications company that was sold in Japan, Cross Border Exchange, a global technology communications company sold to JP Morgan, and Global Thermostat. She is currently CEO of Anthrocene Advisors.
At Columbia University Chichilnisky is Professor of Economics and Mathematical Statistics and a University Senator, where she has developed a landmark methodology, with support from the U.S. Air Force, for a new foundation of probability and statistics in an approach to catastrophic risks that allows more realistic treatment of rare but important events such as climate change. She is the author of fifteen books and some 322 scientific articles in preeminent academic journals. Her two most recent books are “Saving Kyoto; 2009” and “Reversing Climate Change; 2018.”
Dr. Chichilnisky holds two Ph.D. degrees, in Mathematics and in Economics. She studied at MIT and the University of California Berkeley. She is a frequent political and economic speaker on CNN, ABC, BBC TV News, and Bloomberg News, and a keynote speaker at leading international business conferences and universities. In 2023 Chichilnisky will speak at ENGIE’s “Center of Excellence’” during COP28 in Dubai on the topic of water desalination and its impact on climate change. She taught previously at Harvard, Essex and Stanford Universities, appeared in Time Magazine as “Hero of the Environment,” and was elected one of the Ten Most Influential Latinos in the U.S. In 2019 Chichilnisky proposed and wrote at the request of US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI, D) what became 45Q, a law that rewards with tax credits the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere; in 2022 this was extended to billions in US federal cash awards in the influential and pathbreaking federal legislation IRA (Inflation Reduction Act of 2022). Her most recent presentations include “Financial Breakthrough for Reversing Climate Change” at Yale University Center for Environmental Justice on October 27, 2023.
Chichilnisky has two children, was born in Argentina, and is a US citizen residing in New York City.