Cristina Muñoz De La Torre

Cristina Muñoz De La Torre is the director of programs research at Just Solutions Collective, where she is building the disaster resilience policy research program and the environmental justice community-based solutions program. She is also participating in national discussions around disaster resilience policies. De La Torre brings 13 years of research and leadership experience in climate, environmental justice, and natural hazards and disasters.

De La Torre is getting her PhD at the University of Iowa. Her dissertation work implements social vulnerability and social capital theory to evaluate the distribution of federal disaster assistance from an equity lens. Her work includes community case studies, national panel analysis, and state-level comparative studies using spatial-econometric and panel analysis. She has published in peer-review journals such as Natural Hazards Review, the International Journal of Environmental Research, and Public Health. In addition, she was awarded the J. X. Kasperson Student Paper Award, sponsored by the Hazards, Risk and Disasters Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers.

De La Torre's leadership work includes serving as the climate and environmental justice director of the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa. In addition, she has served as chair of the Bill Anderson Fund and is on the board of Energy Justice Network. Before her position at Just Solutions Collective, she was a community resilience planner at Astig Planning, where she led the design, research, and community engagement of flood resilience action plans, climate action plans, and environmental justice brownfield redevelopment plans.