Jill Curley P.Biol.

Director

City of Calgary

Jill is an Adaptation Specialist with the Climate Team at The City of Calgary. Her educational background includes a B.Sc. in Environmental Science (2008) and a certificate in Applied Land Use Planning (2019). A few years in the environmental consulting industry developed her base in environmental assessment, regulatory approvals and project management. At the City of Airdrie, she had the opportunity to develop the stormwater program, where she worked closely with Water Services Operations, Engineering, and the Planning departments to guide stormwater management. She’s been on the Climate Adaptation Team for two years, where she manages the natural infrastructure program, as directed in the Climate Resilience Strategy (2018), to champion the use of natural infrastructure for municipal service provision.

Jill sees opportunities for incremental shifts in development patterns and landscaping techniques that--when implemented across the board--can improve stormwater management and, therefore, environmental health and human well-being. From her perspective, effective stormwater management is a cross-departmental, inter-jurisdictional concern that requires detailed, site-specific focus, as well as a broad understanding of the landscape-level challenges and opportunities. Through building public awareness around “what is stormwater, what is natural infrastructure, and why do I care”, we can work towards managing stormwater and developing land in a way that works with natural infrastructure for everyone’s benefit.