Debra M. Butler is the executive director of the American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP), a network of professionals and practitioners engaged in transdisciplinary research, policy, communication, financing and scalable restorations that transform the climate futures of humans and ecologies. Butler earned her PhD in environmental sciences from the University of Massachusetts-Boston and master’s degrees from Brandeis and Harvard Universities.
Butler served as a co-author of Community-Driven Relocation: Recommendations for the U.S. Gulf Coast Region and Beyond (2024) published by the National Academies of Sciences. Butler has researched and written extensively on climate induced displacement, migration and relocation on the Gulf Coast, and the status of internally displaced persons in the United States. Her research focused on indigenous and placed-based adaptations to “natural” hazards in the Gulf and northern Cuba, comparing the impacts of governance frameworks of mitigation within complex human/ecological systems. Her personal and professional collaborations include the Climigration Network, Rising Voices, the Sustainable Solutions Lab, the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, the National Medical Association, and TapRoot. At ASAP, she manages relationships with federal and private partners, philanthropies and non-profits, community-based organizations and 900+ individual and organizational members.
Butler is a Gulf coast native, a survivor of Hurricane Katrina and BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill which translates, intersects, elevates, and advocates intentional, just and equitable adaptive behaviors.