Back: The Team

Michael Berkowitz

Executive Director of Climate Resilience Academy at University of Miami

Michael Berkowitz is a former Founding Principal of Resilient Cities Catalyst, a new global non-profit helping cities and their partners tackle their toughest challenges. He is currently the Executive Director of Climate Resilience Academy at the University of Miami.

Previously he joined the Rockefeller Foundation in August 2013 to shape and oversee the creation of 100 Resilient Cities. He served as the 100RC President from 2013 to 2019.

From 2005 to 2013 he worked at Deutsche Bank, most recently as the global head of Operational Risk Management (ORM). In that capacity he oversaw the firm’s OR capital planning efforts, served as a primary regulatory contact and connected the myriad operational risk management efforts group-wide.

He held multiple positions at DB, including Chief Operating Officer of Corporate Security, Business Continuity (CSBC) and Operational Risk Management, where he had responsibility for budgeting, operations, and global coordination across the group's six workstreams. During this time, he also served as the head of the Bank’s Protective Intelligence unit, designed to assess and analyze security and geo-political threats to the Bank, its staff, processes and information.

Prior to December 2010, he was the CSBC head in APAC with responsibility for all business continuity planning and alternate site operations, as well as physical security, executive and event protection, fraud investigation and prevention, and cybercrime.  Between 2005 and 2008 he had management roles for DB in Mumbai, India and New York, including leading the firm’s crisis management effort to the 2009 flu pandemic. 

Until January 2005, he was Deputy Commissioner at the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) in New York City. In this position he worked on major planning initiatives, including the New York City Coastal Storm, Biological Terrorism and Transit Strike contingency plans.

At OEM, he led an initiative to create OEM’s Public-Private Emergency Planning Initiative and its Ready New York citizen preparedness campaign. He also responded to incidents including the 1999 outbreak of West Nile Fever, Tropical Storm Floyd, major flooding in Southern Queens (1999), the crashes of SwissAir 111 and American Airlines 587, the 2003 Northeast blackout, as well as the 2001 anthrax incidents and the World Trade Center disaster.