Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation and former President of the University of Pennsylvania, was the first woman to serve as president of an Ivy League institution, and has been recognised by Forbes as one of world's 100 most powerful women. Judith was promoting her new book, The Resilience Dividend and was interviewed by Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive of Nesta.

Judith Rodin

New York. Athens. Wenzhou. Boston. Oslo. Dhaka. New Orleans. Nairobi. In recent years, dozens of cities across the globe have been hit by large-scale catastrophes of every kind: natural disaster, geopolitical conflict, food shortages, disease and contagion, terrorist attacks. If you haven't been directly touched by one of these cataclysms yourself, in our interconnected world you are sure to have been affected in some way. They harm vulnerable individuals, destabilise communities and threaten organisations and even whole societies.

We are at greater risk than ever from city-wide catastrophe, and as the severity and frequency of these disasters increase, we must become better at preparing for, responding to and recovering from them. Be it Haiti's dependence on humanitarian aid, the rebuilding effort after the Great Fire of Manhattan or the reason why more girls than boys drowned in Japan's 2011 tsunami.

The Resilience Dividend combines vivid stories with practical insights (such as how to disaster-proof a building) and ground-breaking research to help build a radical future in which individuals, companies and entire societies face disaster by creating more dynamic, more resilient cities.