Antonia F. Samur Zuniga

BIOGRAPHY:

Antonia Samur is a Project Coordinator (Staff Associate) at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP). Her role focuses on managing phase II of the Resilient Children, Resilient Communities initiative, which aims to assist disaster-stricken communities in Puerto Rico and North Carolina to implement a child-focused disaster planning model, with a strong emphasis on rebuilding stronger more resilient communities over the long term. She provides analytic support to the Resilient Children, Youth, and Communities project, which examines the physical and mental health effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on children. In this context, she is studying the role of social media as a source of resilience during and after the oil spill using machine-learning techniques. In addition to these projects she also supports the development of a curriculum on post-disaster housing recovery planning. Antonia holds a dual Master's degree in International Affairs with a focus on environmental policy and international development from the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University and the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Chile with a focus on social development and multidimensional poverty measurement. Alongside her work at NCDP, Antonia is supporting the development of a methodological framework to measure climate change vulnerability of small and medium electric systems and its users in Chile (as part of a government grant to fund public goods for climate change adaptation) and is a Senior Advisor for the Global Schools Program at the Sustainable Development Solutions Network – Youth Initiative, striving to integrate sustainable development in K-12 education globally.