Meet Rhode Island's Chief Resilience Officer

As of January 1, 2024, Rhode Island has a new Chief Resilience Officer (CRO), Kimberly Korioth. A lifelong Rhode Islander, Kim most recently was Stormwater and Resilience Analyst at the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank (RIIB).

Five questions with Kimberly Korioth, Rhode Island’s Chief Resilience Officer

What does resilience mean to you, in the context of the Ocean State?

Some states see it as entirely emergency management, others only adaptation, while others see it as a combination of greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation to the flooding and sea level rise resulting from climate change. Personally, I’ve always taken the broader definition. All of our resilience solutions need to be systems-based and coordinated. That mindset lets you provide the right solution for any given location, and I want to make sure our adaptation solutions are coordinated with mitigation and emergency management efforts.

What is the biggest challenge you face in your new role?

There are so many resilience efforts statewide, but we need to coordinate them further. I’m often thrilled to see an organization gaining momentum on a resilience initiative, then turn around and see two other organizations doing the same thing. It would be so impactful to align on these  efforts. A lot of relationship building needs to happen in order to foster this collaboration and coordination, and we also need to provide online resources for information sharing across our statewide partners. And we could get so much more funding and support for these initiatives if they were all working in lockstep. As much as the CRO is a statewide resilience lead, I also see it as a strong coordination point. The resilience office could provide the hub we need for statewide collaboration on resilience efforts. 

What is one factor working in favor of Rhode Island when it comes to building resilience?

The Municipal Resilience Program has been a strong value add for Rhode Island’s statewide resilience. In 2018, Resilient Rhody set 61 key statewide resilience goals, and through this process it became so apparent that there needed to be a closer connection with cities and towns to move these goals forward. Ultimately, a more resilient state isn’t possible without more resilient municipalities, and so, we wanted to see what the priorities were locally: what resilience challenges are cities and towns seeing? What do they need help with? Can we provide them with a funding source? Now, 36 of our 39 municipalities participate, and we’re seeing how we can further support them. How do we get them design support, staff, regionally-focused capacity? DEM and the Infrastructure Bank will be collaborating on next steps there.

How will you get everyday Rhode Islanders involved in resiliency efforts?

A huge part of this is increasing community engagement and outreach. We need to be sure there’s full community consensus for resilience projects. Another big part is transparency of information. We’ll hold workshops and put the summary of findings online, but it is one thing to post information and another to make it accessible and meaningful. What are our web resources like, how do towns internally publicize this information, do we look at translation services as well? Is information really accessible if it’s just sitting in a spreadsheet somewhere? These are the questions and needs we’ll need to consider as we move resilience forward in Rhode Island.

What is your favorite thing about life in Rhode Island?

As small a state as we are, we have so many different environments. I spent my youth by the coast in Bristol County, now I’m in an area that’s significantly more woodsy. But it can make our resilience initiatives more challenging, because we have to think about a wide range of hazards, from coastal flooding to wildfires.