Michael McCormick, AICP is the Partnerships Lead, Founder, and President of Farallon Strategies, LLC, an advisory, policy, and management consulting firm based in California. He founded Farallon Strategies to support the creation of transformative solutions to reduce society's contributions to climate change and the needed resilience in communities to address the impacts of climate change. He has worked at the local, regional, state, federal levels, and in non-profit, business, and government. These perspectives allow him to see the interconnectedness of work across governance and organizations, and to help create the vision and strategy to affect change. Michael works on governance solutions for climate change initiatives at the local and regional scale and is passionate about national service as an important tool in helping to address the climate crisis. Michael leads a number of Farallon Strategies' initiatives, including work with the CSU Chancellor's Office on Climate Informed Design Day Guidelines, leadership as part of the program team for the California Resilience Partnership, as a partner with CivicWell on expansion of the CivicSpark AmeriCorps program, and as a partner with a number of firms doing critical work at the local, regional, state, and national scale on climate change, resilience, and national service.
Michael actively supports the evolution of the community of practice (see stories on evolving the field) and is currently serving as an Advisor to Resilient Cities Catalyst, Mentor at 3rd Derivative, Advisor to BrightAction, Board Member for Community Climate Solutions, Board Member at the Cool Davis Foundation, Senior Fellow of the American Leadership Forum: Mountain Valley Chapter, and a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. Michael is an instructor and visiting lecturer at various universities and institutes and teaches classes on climate change, land use, and resilience at UC Davis Continuing and Professional Organizations.
In prior roles, Michael has working in local planning departments and in consulting firms, served as the Senior Planning Advisor in Governor Brown's Office of Planning and Research where he co-led the development of the 2017 General Plan Guidelines, created the CivicSpark AmeriCorps program, established the California Adaptation Forum, and helped start the Alliance of Regional Collaboratives for Climate Adaptation. While at OPR he also served on detail as a Deputy Associate Director at the White House Council on Environmental Quality under President Obama where he helped support the State, Local, Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Resilience and helped start the Resilience AmeriCorps Initiative.
