Bernadette Woods Placky

Bernadette Woods Placky is an Emmy Award-winning meteorologist, climate science communicator, and network builder with more than 25 years of experience translating complex science into stories that move people and institutions to act. As Co-Founder and Lead Strategist of Talking Climate Collaborative, she brings a proven model for scaling climate communication through trusted, professional messengers.

Bernadette is best known as the driving force behind Climate Matters at Climate Central, where she served as Chief Meteorologist and Vice President of Engagement. She built Climate Matters into the most widely used climate journalism tool in U.S. local television — growing a network of more than 3,000 meteorologists and media professionals across the country and measurably increasing climate coverage in local news markets nationwide, including conservative and rural markets where traditional climate messaging had never broken through. She also cultivated partnerships with media organizations, nonprofits, academic institutions, and government agencies, and represented Climate Central at major global platforms including UN Climate Conferences, Aspen Ideas: Climate, and Climate Week NYC.

Before Climate Central, Bernadette spent more than a decade as a TV meteorologist — starting in Fayetteville, Arkansas, moving to Lexington, Kentucky, and eventually Baltimore, Maryland, where she became the first female meteorologist in her station’s history and earned an Emmy for Best Weathercaster.

At TCC, she applies the same approach that worked for meteorologists: identify a specific, trusted professional audience, build the tools they actually need, deliver them in the workflow they already use, and measure the result. TCC is now scaling that model to health professionals, faith leaders, educators, and rural communities.

Bernadette is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, holds the Certified Broadcast Meteorologist designation, and has been elected to the AMS Council. She serves on the National Academies Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate, and as an advisor for C-Change Conversations, the Watershed Institute’s Advisory Board, and the Princeton Wrestling Club Board. She holds a B.S. in Meteorology with a minor in French from Penn State University.