Taryn Akiyama is passionate about the intersection of climate policy, global affairs, and finance in enhancing collaboration and scaling impact for climate change and clean energy. At Climate Finance Advisors, she facilitates information exchange between European Union and U.S. Climate Alliance states and provides technical assistance related to energy resilient investments, environmental infrastructure funds, and physical risk disclosure.

Prior to CFA, Taryn served under Governors Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom at the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, where she managed the Under2 Coalition, a group of 220 governments in 43 countries committed to deep emissions reductions. At the World Resources Institute’s Global Commission on Adaptation, she developed a proposal to mainstream climate risk in the most vulnerable developing countries, starting with education. With the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets, she researched the role of federal financial regulators in addressing systemic climate risk and assessed climate disclosure quality among U.S. and international insurers. Throughout her career, Taryn has organized major events including the Global Climate Action Summit, US Climate Action Week, the United Nations Youth Climate Summit, and side events at the Conference of the Parties, Clean Energy Ministerial, and Climate Week.

Taryn holds a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of the Environment and a Bachelor of Environmental Analysis from Claremont McKenna College. She has lived in five countries on three continents and knows some French, Spanish, Indonesian, and Turkish.