Dr. Jairo Garcia

Biography

Jairo Garcia is an expert in sustainable urban development and carbon mitigation, focusing on climate vulnerabilities and resiliency assessments. His research explores elements of spatial data analysis and ecological assessments to identify climate risks and impacts on public health and food systems. As the Director of Climate Policies and Renewables for the City of Atlanta, Garcia developed the City’s Climate Action Plan and led a coalition of stakeholders in crafting an application for Rockefeller’s 100 Resilient Cities program, which awarded Atlanta in 2016. He represented the City at the COP23 Climate Summit as a Local and Regional Leader in Bonn, Germany, and served as a U.S. Subject Matter Expert for the IPCC pre-scoping of the Special Report on Climate Change. Jairo has received numerous awards for his contributions to climate leadership, including the Individual Climate Leadership Award from the EPA in 2017, the Green Ring Award from Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project in 2018, and the Excellence in Climate Leadership Award from the American Public Health Association’s Center for Climate, Health, and Equity in 2023. He holds an engineering degree, an MSc in Management Information Technologies from Syracuse University, an MSc in Sustainability Management from Columbia University, and a Doctoral degree in Educational Technology and Sustainability from Pepperdine University. Currently, he teaches courses on Sustainable Urban Development, Urban Planning, Global Cities, Sustainable Systems, and Climate Change Policies at Georgia Tech.

Research Interests