Susan Crawford is a senior fellow in the Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A former professor at Harvard Law School teaching courses about climate adaptation and public leadership, Crawford is currently writing a book about the range of physical adaptation actions needed as rapid climate change accelerates, and the legal and financial reforms necessary to facilitate them. Her book Charleston: Race, Water, and the Coming Storm (2023) was named a Lillian Smith Book Award winner in 2024. She writes regularly about the intersection of climate change and finance on Substack (“Moving Day”), and is a frequent public speaker. 

Crawford’s writings weave current climate science, personal histories, and policy into compelling narratives. Her prior books include Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution--And Why America Might Miss It (2018), The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance (with Stephen Goldsmith) (2017), and Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, (2013), as well as a number of op-eds and essays. A lawyer by training, she was a partner with WilmerHale (then known as Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering) in Washington, DC, before launching her academic career.

Crawford served as special assistant to the president for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy in 2009. She was one of Politico’s 50 Thinkers, Doers and Visionaries Transforming Politics in 2015 and was a member of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from 2005-2008. Crawford received her B.A. and J.D. from Yale University and served as a clerk for Judge Raymond J. Dearie of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.