Dr Sarah Whitmee is an Assistant Professor in the Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Dr Whitmee currently works on the Pathfinder Initiative, which aims to assess and synthesise lessons from the implementation of practical, evidence-based pathways to zero-carbon societies. Funded by The Wellcome Trust and Oak Foundation, the Pathfinder Initiative aims to fill a number of knowledge gaps on the co-benefits of greenhouse gas mitigation actions – namely which actions, when implemented, have the largest multiple benefits for health, the environment and prosperity.
Prior to her position at LSHTM, Dr Whitmee was the Executive Secretary to the Rockefeller Economic Council on Planetary Health at Oxford Martin School and part of the Secretariat of The Rockefeller Lancet Planetary Health Commission. Dr Whitmee has a background in conservation biology and macroecology. She has worked for a number of years on biodiversity indicators in both terrestrial and marine systems, including a long-standing collaboration with the WWF Living Planet Index at the Institute of Zoology, ZSL, which tracks trends in the status and abundance of the world’s vertebrate biodiversity.