Dr. Atyia Martin was appointed by Mayor Martin J. Walsh in 2015 as the Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Boston as part of the 100 Resilient Cities pioneered by the Rockefeller foundation. The chief resilience officer’s role was to figure out how cities should prepare for the social and physical pressures of climate change. Dr. Martin’s award-winning program powerfully demonstrated that one could not build a truly resilient city without simultaneously addressing the structural problems of racism head on.

Dr. Martin came well prepared to this position. Having worked as the Regional Planner for the City of Boston’s Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management among the public health and healthcare system, Dr. Martin helped to develop techniques for emergency preparedness, psychological trauma response, coordination, and education and training She also served as a civilian at the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in the Boston Field Intelligence Group and as an adjunct faculty at Northeastern University in the Master of Homeland Security program.

Dr. Martin earned her Doctor of Law and Policy from Northeastern University, Master in Homeland Security Leadership from the University of Connecticut, Bachelor in Liberal Arts with a Concentration in Administrative Studies and Serbian Croatian from Excelsior College, and Associate in Serbian Croatian from the Defense Language Institute She is the founder of All Aces, Inc, her own consulting business where she builds resilient communities by activating the power of consciousness, critical thinking, and community to catalyze the critical action necessary for addressing racism and advancing equity and resilience.