Forum Preview (Heidi Centola, AWF Planning Committee Chair)

Heidi Centola has served as Senior Account Executive, New Markets of The Weather Company, an IBM Business since March 2018. She is responsible for helping facilitate and grow strategic partnerships in Agribusiness.

Prior to joining The Weather Company, Heidi gained more than 15 years’ experience in professional meteorology and business development. She most recently served as a Senior Business Development Manager for Schneider Electric Cloud Services (DTN) where she facilitated strategic partnerships both internally and externally to aid in the growth of the energy management and sustainability businesses through organic innovation and custom weather solutions for segments such as Retail and Healthcare. Heidi also worked as the Manager of the Agricultural and Alternative Investment Products at CME Group focused on the volume growth development of the CME Group global weather futures and options and alternative investment products. In this role, she collaborated with large institutional traders and brokers across the globe including but not limited to corporate commercials, hedge funds, banks, reinsurance/insurance and energy companies. Prior to CME Group, Heidi served as Manager, Strategic Relations for Earth Networks as well as worked as a Senior Account Executive for WeatherBug focused on energy trading. Her background also includes various client-facing roles with WSI. While at WSI, Heidi played an integral role in the growth and development of the energy offer to traders and utilities.

Centola holds a B.S. degree in meteorology with a minor in technical mathematics from Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She is the chair of the American Meteorological Society (AMS Board on Enterprise Economic) Development and past chair of the AMS Energy Committee. She also served on the Board of Directors for the Weather Risk Management Association (WRMA) and an active member of the AMS Financial Weather Risk Management Committee.

The American Meteorological Society (AMS), with membership and activities spanning the private, public and academic sectors, is uniquely positioned to gauge these impacts, as well as to facilitate and guide the growth of the weather, water and climate enterprise. Toward this end, the AMS established the Board on Enterprise Economic Development (BEED), which serves under the Commission on the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise (CWWCE).

The primary purpose of the AMS BEED is to promote growth in the economic base of the weather, water and climate enterprise. A secondary purpose of the BEED is to promote quantification of the economic value of the enterprise, including weather and climate-related risk.

The BEED fulfills these purposes by bringing together the providers and users of weather, water and climate data, technology and services. Engagement between these stakeholders has multiple benefits. It promotes understanding of user needs, socializes current and future applicable technologies and trends, matches solutions and services with user needs, and facilitates business opportunities. The BEED also creates an environment in which stakeholders can identify and document the economic risk factors and metrics associated with their sector of the enterprise.

The BEED develops and participates in a number of activities to support its purposes and goals. First, based on the economic environment and national priorities at a given point in time, the BEED facilitates dialogues between economic sectors and the weather, water and climate community through the establishment of committees.

The BEED organizes the annual AMS Washington Forum (AWF), which occurs each spring in Washington, D.C. The AWF provides an opportunity for members of the weather, water, and climate community to meet with senior Federal agency officials, Congressional staff, and other community members to hear about the status of current programs, learn about new initiatives, discuss issues of interest to the community, identify business opportunities, and speak out about data and other needs. The focus of the AMS Washington Forum is Connecting Science and Technology with Business and Public Policy.

The BEED also supports, as needed, the annual Symposium on the Weather and Climate Enterprise, organized by the CWWCE. Beyond these specific events, the BEED facilitates additional venues for the weather, water and climate communities to discuss and explore business opportunities, including industry conferences, workshops, symposia and ad hoc meetings.