Jennifer Denno Cissé

Jennifer Cissé leads Abt’s Climate Adaptation and Resilience practice, including strategy development, business development, project execution, and thought leadership across its public and private sector client portfolio, both in the U.S. and internationally. She uses her more than 15 years of experience as a risk and resilience expert to serve as the climate adaptation technical lead for public and private sector clients.

Cissé came to Abt from the UN University Institute for Environment and Human Security. As senior research manager, she oversaw the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII) portfolio, including the creation and management of a new research collaboration with the UN University and universities in the Pacific and the Caribbean. She also led the MCII’s global disaster risk finance (DRF) evidence roadmap process and managed MCII contributions regarding strategic analytics, evidence-based action, and the development of best practice for climate and disaster risk finance and insurance.

Prior to that, Cissé worked as a senior risk advisor for the U.S. Agency for International Development. She served as technical authority on complex issues at the intersection of risk and food security, including risk mitigation and management, agricultural insurance, disaster risk finance, and risk and resilience policy. While there, Cissé designed and managed the USAID Bureau for Food Security’s risk and insurance portfolio, valued at over $35 million, and developed the Markets, Risk, and Resilience Innovation Lab. She also supported risk integration across the multi-country Feed the Future Initiative and USAID focus resilience countries by providing direct technical assistance, creating and disseminating technical guidance, research, and evidence.

Expertise

• Climate Adaptation
• Disaster Risk Finance
• Climate Resilience

Education

• Expert Author Group, Jennifer Denno Cissé, Sönke Kreft, Janek Toepper, Daniel Stadtmueller (eds). 2021. “From Innovation to Learning: A Strategic Evidence Roadmap for Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance.” InsuResilience Global Partnership & Munich Climate Insurance Initiative.
• Jennifer Denno Cissé. 2021. “Climate and Disaster Risk Financing Instruments: An Overview.” UNU-EHS. Bonn, Germany.
• Bapu Vaitla, Jennifer Denno Cissé, Joanna Upton, Girmay Tesfay, Nigussie Abadi, Daniel Maxwell. 2019. “How the choice of food security indicator affects the assessment of resilience—an example from northern Ethiopia,” Food Security.
• Jennifer Denno Cissé and Christopher B. Barrett. 2018. “Estimating Development Resilience: A Conditional Moments-Based Approach,” Journal of Development Economics.
• Joanna B. Upton, Jennifer Denno Cissé, Christopher B. Barrett. 2016. “Food Security as Resilience: Reconciling Definition and Measurement,” Agricultural Economics.