Emily Slotnick, CFM, AICP

Emily has nearly two decades of experience helping communities from coast to coast navigate the impacts of climate change through adaptation planning and developing resilience solutions. Emily leads a team of planners, scientists, engineers, and GIS professionals to support clients by developing cross-disciplinary solutions to reduce vulnerability, strengthen infrastructure, protect natural resources, and ensure compliance with federal, state, and local environmental regulations.

Emily started her career in the private sector in Washington state, working as a planner alongside environmental and civil engineers on flood damage reduction and shoreline habitat restoration projects. She moved back to the east coast in the weeks following Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee, at which point she honed her skills in disaster recovery, community resilience, and natural hazard mitigation planning to help New York State communities recover from those two storms, and from Super Storm Sandy which struck the region the following year. In 2017, Emily brought her expertise to the public sector, leading the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission’s hazard mitigation planning and climate adaptation program, as well as spearheading the agency’s work under the Massachusetts Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness program.

Emily joined BETA in 2021 as our Climate Resilience Manager to develop service area that would be supported by an interdisciplinary team of climate resilience planners and other professionals across the company. Her team leads communities through FEMA-approved Hazard Mitigation Planning processes, comprehensive and master plan updates, MVP action grant implementation, floodplain bylaw and ordinance updates, and conservation land management plans. In 2022, Emily assumed leadership of BETA’s environmental permitting and ecological services team. This merger has expanded her team’s capabilities to include permitting and environmental review of municipal facilities and large-scale infrastructure projects under local, state, and federal environmental regulations. Emily’s staff further supports BETA projects by providing in-house wetland delineation, wildlife habitat evaluation, and construction monitoring services for state and municipal clients. In addition, several municipalities retain the environmental permitting and ecological services team to provide expert peer review of wetland boundary delineations, wetlands permits, and stormwater management system design.

Throughout her career, Emily has worked with clients large and small to integrate climate impact projections into their plans for the future, and she takes great pride in working across BETA’s disciplines to integrate environmental stewardship sustainability and climate resilience into project design.

Emily spends most of her free time either working or playing on her sailboat in Buzzards Bay, riding her bike to outdoor music and food venues around the Pioneer Valley, and exploring the trails and waterways of New England with her partner and their very cute dog.