About Charles:

Charles has many fond memories of ASF, from attending summer camp between kindergarten and first grade in 1973 to playing soccer with friends during lunch in elementary school, to having to deliver the salutatorian speech at graduation in 1985. "I was deathly afraid of public speaking and must have rehearsed that speech 50 times! But in the end, it came off well."

He lived in Mexico City during two periods as a result of his father's posting at the U.S. Embassy, the first time 1972-77, the second time 1984-88 – although he attended Yale College beginning in 1985 and after he visited Mexico for Christmas and Summer breaks.

Regarding his memories, at ASF he recalls when he was a high school senior at ASF taking AP English with Randy Perazzini. The memory of that class is vivid in his mind to this day. "We had terrific debates about the books we read in that class, from The Trial by Franz Kafka, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, to The Woman in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe. What really influenced me, however, was not the books, nor the debates; it was Mr. Perazzini's meticulous attention to writing. It was through him that I learned the power of words, the value of being able to communicate well in writing, and the joy of writing too!" To this day, he remembers this lesson and tells it to the people who work for him…" there is no more powerful skill than the ability to communicate your thoughts, feelings, and knowledge in writing. My top professional achievements have come about as a result of my ability to write well."

Charles also tells us about his professional experience. "Growing up in cities choked by smog and the putrid smell of untreated sewage dumped in waterways made me angry. I have an innate love of nature, and it kills me to see so many beautiful places ruined by pollution. As I grew older, in my mid-twenties, I decided to go back to school to study environmental management." He worked at the World Environment Center, an organization that helps large multinational companies, such as Alcoa and Johnson & Johnson, to improve the environmental management of their small- and medium-sized suppliers.

Since 2006 he's worked at the World Resources Institute. "About 12 years ago, I decided to focus my work on global water risks. My colleagues and I developed an online website called Aqueduct, which is now the most current, comprehensive, and high-resolution global water risk assessment and mapping tool available. It is completely free and available to all users and is now a key resource for many analysts and decision-makers concerned with water risk. I found I was good at developing concepts for new analytical tools – and selling these ideas to funders, including governments, companies, and private foundations."

He recently developed Aqueduct Floods, which maps global risks from river floods and coastal storm surges. Aqueduct Food cross-references the world's food production and trade system with a variety of global water risks. With his colleagues, he developed a tool that could predict water-related conflicts around the world. They formed the consortium called the Water, Peace, and Security Partnership.

"Last December, we launched this tool, which uses a machine learning model to predict conflict hotspots across the developing world. The model makes use of near-real-time political, social, economic, demographic, and water risk data to predict whether any given location will experience peace or violent conflict over the next 12 months. Our initial model does a fairly good job at predicting conflict, but I believe there is a lot of room for improvement, and we will work over the next couple of years to make improvements to the model, adding datasets and experimenting with other, more powerful, machine learning approaches. Our consortium members also work to reduce water-related risks. They have worked in Mali and Iraq over the past couple of years, and we hope to soon expand our work to East Africa and Afghanistan." It was for this Water, Peace, and Security work that he and his colleagues were awarded the Luxembourg Peace Prize for Outstanding Environmental Peace.