Dr. Shannon McNeeley leads the Pacific Institute’s Water and Climate Equity program, directing its strategy, fundraising, and research to advance equitable, climate-resilient water and sanitation for frontline communities in the United States. Her work spans water and climate law and policy, rural water systems, and the effects of climate change on water access and affordability. She also led the multi-part Water, Sanitation, and Climate Change in the United States series, which documents more than 100 strategies communities are using to adapt. 

Shannon’s work is interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and grounded in co-production with communities, agencies, and other decision makers. She began her career as an associate scientist and Advanced Study Program Fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Through that role and her Ph.D. research, she led ground-breaking, community-based climate research in Interior Alaska that integrated Indigenous knowledges with Western social and physical sciences, as well as drought research with Colorado water decision makers. Before joining the Institute in 2021, she served as a research scientist, adaptation lead, and university tribal liaison at Colorado State University’s North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center, where she co-produced decision-support information, tools, and climate and drought plans with federal and state agencies, Tribes, and communities. The Wind River Reservation drought partnership she led won a 2017 Climate Adaptation Leadership Award. She was also an author on the Third and Fourth US National Climate Assessments, coordinated Indigenous knowledges contributions from more than 50 NCA4 authors, and served on the steering committees for the first Status of Tribes and Climate Change report and three National Adaptation Forums. ScholarGPS ranks her in the top 0.5% of scholars worldwide in adaptation. 

She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Change and Sustainability Science from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where she was an NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) and Graduate Research Fellow, and an M.A. in International Environmental Policy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.