Robin Barnes

Robin Barnes is an economic recovery and resilience expert with nearly four decades of on-the-ground experience helping cities, small businesses, and nonprofits recover from and prepare for economic and climate-based disasters and working closely with nonprofit organizations on strategy, performance measurement & management and resource development. As a consultant, Robin partners with philanthropy and nonprofit organizations to rebuild economies, create jobs, and help communities face impending environmental and economic changes with strength and security. As a coach, Robin works with mission-driven individuals to expand their professional opportunities and impact.  

Robin has a proven track record of bringing diverse people and ideas together to meaningfully and measurably improve distressed communities, economies, and environments across the country—from “boots on the ground” technical assistance work with small businesses rebuilding across New York City after 9/11, to developing a gold-standard post-Katrina small business recovery program for Gulf Coast fisheries, to writing the chapter on small business and entrepreneurship for President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Strategy, to leading the creation of the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan, a roadmap to guide policymakers, public and private leaders, businesses, and community stakeholders through improved management of stormwater, subsidence, and other threats of climate change. As the former EVP and COO at Greater New Orleans, Inc., Robin has operated at the intersections of practice and policy and environment and economics and has overseen several major initiatives designed to create and protect jobs in the region and to turn environmental threats into economic opportunity and job creation.

With a BA in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania and a MPA from NYU Wagner, Robin has a strong academic foundation that undergirds her practice.