Executive in Residence, Duke University

Mercy Berman DeMenno is an Executive in Residence with the Risk Science for Climate Resilience Initiative (School of Engineering) and has served as a Senior Fellow and affiliated researcher with the Center on Risk (Science and Society Initiative), the Global Financial Markets Center (School of Law), and the Rethinking Regulation Program (Kenan Institute for Ethics). A political economist by training, her research, teaching, and thought leadership span four interdisciplinary fields: 1) financial markets and regulation (e.g., systemic risk and financial system resilience; prudential and market conduct regulation; climate-related financial risk and climate finance); 2) energy and environmental policy (e.g., deep decarbonization systems modeling; energy transition policy; resilient, sustainable, and equitable infrastructure); 3) regulatory governance (e.g., stakeholder engagement; ex ante and ex post regulatory impact assessment; international regulatory cooperation); and 4) corporate sustainability (e.g., environmental, social, and governance policy and performance; corporate political activity; stakeholder capitalism). Dr. DeMenno’s current work is at the intersection of these topics, focusing on climate-related systemic financial risk, regulatory and market transition strategies, and the implications for economic and environmental resilience. For example, recent work centers on the design, implementation, and evaluation of climate stress tests as a tool to inform regulatory and investment strategies for resilience across banking, insurance, electric power, and interdependent infrastructure systems.

Over the last 15 years, Dr. DeMenno has advised policymakers at the local, national, and international levels and executives in the financial services and energy sectors spanning the AMER, EMEA, and APAC regions. She has authored over 30 articles, chapters, and major governmental and intergovernmental reports and is a frequent keynote speaker on risk, regulation, and resilience. Dr. DeMenno received a PhD and an MA from Duke University and an MBA and a BA from the University of New Mexico.