Ria Persad studied mathematics and physics at Harvard, Princeton, and Cambridge Universities with doctoral study at Rice University. Her experience in climate modeling began at Lawrence Livermore Lab’s Supercomputer Center in 1991. Persad performed earth and solar system modeling at NASA and went on to model geophysical systems at Bell Geospace. She worked on the trading floors of Lehman Brothers and was a consultant to Goldman Sachs. As a climatologist at Enron and Duke Energy, she was alerted to the needs of the energy trading sector and weather risk management. She later went on to develop state-of-the-art long-range weather prediction systems which were peer-reviewed among academia and U.S. Department of Defense scientists and rigorously tested for the top meteorological broadcasting station in the Midwest. She models complex systems for the U.S. Space Program and is an innovative Subject Matter Expert. She has recently been appointed as advisor to NOAA’s Climate Business Institute at the National Climate Data Center. Persad received the Highest Honor from the Society of Women Engineers and Citations from the U.S. Secretary of Energy and the U.S. Senate on Scientific Achievement.