Mr. Francesco “Frank” Femia

Mr. Francesco “Frank” Femia

Co-Founder & President
Center for Climate and Security
NSWG

Francesco Femia is CEO of the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR). He has previously served as Co-president of the Center for Climate and Security, and Co-chair of the Climate and Security Advisory Group. He is an expert on European foreign policy, climate change, security and defense issues.

Francesco Femia is CEO of the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR). He co-manages all of CSR’s efforts, including the Center for Climate and Security, the Center on Nuclear Risks and the Climate-Nuclear-Security Program.

Previously, Femia served as Co-president of the Center for Climate and Security, and Co-chair of the Climate and Security Advisory Group – the primary forum for climate and security dialogue in the U.S. national security community. Before that, he was Program Director at the Connect U.S. Fund, where he led programs ranging from climate resilience to mass atrocity prevention and response. Femia is the Co-founder of both the Council on Strategic Risks and the Center for Climate and Security.

He is an expert on European foreign policy, climate change, security and defense issues.

He has published extensively on the security implications of climate change, water stress and natural resource mismanagement in Syria and North Africa, including in the seminal report ‘The Arab Spring and Climate Change’, the SAIS Review of International Affairs, and the Brown Journal of World Affairs. He is also a regular commentator on how national security, defense and intelligence communities address climate change-related threats, appearing on a range of television programs and the feature film documentary, ‘Age of Consequences’. He is frequently-cited and interviewed in both mainstream and niche media outlets, including Fox News, USA Today, Forbes, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, National Review, New Republic, the BBC, The Atlantic, Defense News, Defense One, and Stars and Stripes, among others.   

He earned his M.A. from the London School of Economics (LSE), where he focused on European foreign policy, security and defense issues.