Chad Frischmann is the co-author, lead researcher and principal architect of the methodology and models behind the New York Times best-seller Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming (Penguin, 2017) and the Drawdown Review (February, 2020). Leading a global team of researchers, Chad designed integrated global models to assess the world’s most effective climate solutions and determine if, when, and how the world can reach “drawdown,” the point in time when the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases begins to decline on a year-to-year basis. As head of research and technology since Project Drawdown’s inception, Chad is a key spokesperson and coalition-builder dedicated to sharing the message and model of the Drawdown Framework to the world.

With an interdisciplinary background in public policy, human rights, sustainable development, and environmental conservation, Chad works as a systems strategist to build a new, regenerative future with cascading benefits to human and planetary well-being. He is the lead author of the paper “Drawdown’s ‘System of Solutions’ Helps to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals”, and speaks and writes widely on topics linking climate solutions to global challenges that benefit people and the planet.

 Chad provides a systems-based, action-orientated approach to research and strategic leadership. Previously, as the Senior Program Officer at The Europaeum, an association of leading European universities, Chad worked to further international collaboration through academic mobility and exchange between students, researchers, and those working in the public and private sectors. He taught at the University of Oxford and the University of California at Berkeley; and worked as a consultant and researcher for numerous organizations, from small grassroots non-profits to international agencies such as UNESCO, the International Work Group on Indigenous Affairs, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

 Chad is an accomplished international speaker bridging science and action to diverse audiences. Chad’s talks have been featured at the University of Oxford, Harvard, the COP23 in Bonn, the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the University of California at Berkeley, the Carbon Leadership Forum, the University of Washington, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Dutch Sustainability Congress, the MAD Symposium, the Global Sustainable Technology & Innovation Conference, the International Conference on Sustainable Development, TED Global’s “We the Future’, the UCSF Osher Mini-Medical School, the UNFCCC COP 25, the Omega Institute, The World Congress on Agroforestry (4th), the European Commission, the US Government Accountability Office, TEDxJohannesburg,among others.