As jurisdictions and corporations face the effects of climate change and the related economic instability, social inequality, migration, and resource scarcity, they are starting to develop comprehensive strategies that closely interlink ecology and resilience, focusing on the capacity to withstand climate-related shocks. A CRO leads the development of a resilience strategy, a process during which the CRO brings in a wide variety of stakeholders to help identify the entity’s resilience challenges, its capabilities and plans to address them, and then to identify the gaps between these two. At the end of this process, the CRO will have a series of resilience-building initiatives that he or she will then work to put into action.

Chief Resilience Officers bring together a wide array of stakeholders from the private sector, non-profits, and civil society to build support for resilience-building in general and oversee the execution of individual initiatives. Often the CRO acts as an in-house consultant helping departments within the entity apply a resilience lens so that resources are leveraged holistically, and projects planned for synergy. This lets the entity get the most “bang for its buck” on its projects, potentially achieving multiple resilience goals with one project. This could include, for example, a flood barrier that also serves as a bike path, promoting healthy citizens and cohesive communities. Finally, CROs communicate to external stakeholders such as investors, residents, businesses and the media the work being undertaken to ensure a sustainable, thriving community.