Sarah Labowitz is currently exploring how climate disasters create openings for movement-based organizing and innovative governance. She is a producer with Untold, a film production company that tells sensitive documentary and narrative stories. Her first feature length documentary, Texas, USA, is anticipated to be released in 2024.
Sarah previously worked in leadership roles at the ACLU of Texas and the City of Houston Housing and Community Development Department, and was a policy advisor at the U.S. Department of State. She co-founded and co-directed the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.
Sarah is a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Grinnell College. She serves on the board of the Houston Committee on Foreign Relations and Houston’s Human Rights Subcommittee for the 2026 World Cup. She previously served as a World Economic Forum Global Future Council member and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was included in Forbes’ inaugural 30 Under 30 list for law and policy in 2012 and recognized in 2017 for her volunteer work during Hurricane Harvey. Sarah lives and works in Houston, Texas.
The period after a disaster is a precious time when people, the financial system and the government embody a kind of flexibility that could help support those who want to move out of harm’s way and toward a safer, more resilient way of living better suited to our current climate.
Climate shocks, such as recent, devastating Hurricanes Helene and Milton, open windows when the disaster recovery system can encourage and support adaptation to new climate realities.
The conspiracy playbook focuses on undermining confidence in government and dividing Americans.
A conversation about whether FEMA and other federal agencies can handle the response after back-to-back major hurricanes hit the Southeast U.S. in two weeks.
Congressional paralysis has strained a system already reeling from more frequent and severe natural disasters.
An article on the federal authorization of emergency funding for housing recovery
The rising pace and cost of disasters is cause for alarm, both because of the likelihood of major disruption in so many people’s lives, and because of the potential for systemic failures in the housing and insurance markets that could lead to wider, global economic shocks.
The reality of a warming climate coupled with increasing urbanization means that extreme disasters aren’t rare anymore.
An increase in climate-driven disasters, particularly hurricanes, results in four major risks for U.S. national security. To address these risks, the government must build a more equitable and responsive national disaster-recovery policy.
Join the Carnegie Endowment online for a conversation between Jake Bittle, a staff writer at Grist and the author of The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration.
