Nina Idemudia is the new CEO of the Center for Neighborhood Technology. The urban planner begins her tenure at the Chicago-based urban resilience nonprofit this week.

Idemudia said that her job now is to make sure residents of vulnerable communities have the tools to “thrive in place” after a summer of record rainfall, widespread flooding and extreme heat in Chicago.

“You could keep doing what you’re doing or you could try something different,” Idemudia said. “But either way change is coming.”

Idemudia, a Detroit-native, began her urban planning career in Los Angeles before coming to Chicago. She most recently managed a $237 million fund for Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development dedicated to help the city’s most affected neighborhoods recover economically from the COVID-19 pandemic. Last month, the Illinois Chapter of the American Planning Association awarded the Chicago Recovery Plan the 2023 Best Practice Award.

Scott Bernstein and Stan Hallett founded CNT in 1978 to address local environmental challenges for neighborhoods to flourish economically. Today, Idemudia said, CNT’s primary function is to mitigate the extreme weather caused by climate change using nature-based projects that rely on data analytics.

“When flooding season comes again, we’ll be seeing less of the effects of flooding and climate change on the residents of Chicago,” Idemudia said. ”Again, we know it will happen, it’s just about making sure people are on board.”

Cook County has already put $6 million of its $100 million American Rescue Plan Act funding toward implementing CNT’s RainReady program. According to a spokesperson for the county, six suburban communities along the Calumet River were selected to participate: Blue Island, Calumet City, Calumet Park, Dolton, Riverdale and Robbins. These communities are situated in low-lying areas with significant impervious surface and are thus prone to frequent urban flooding.

CNT’s plan is to work with each municipality to organize steering committees that will then decide on which nature-based projects to implement. These projects could include everything from rain gardens and constructed wetlands to porous pavements and rain barrels. CNT will administer the RainReady Calumet Corridor project through 2026.

Idemudia said that under-resourced communities have always wanted to implement greener solutions to mitigate local flooding, and now they can.

“There’s lots of tools that we have in our toolbox at CNT that we try to help people with,” Idemudia said. “But we definitely want to try to get them before the flood actually happens, and before the emergency actually happens.”

Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco covers climate change and the environment for WBEZ and Grist. Follow him on Twitter at @__juanpab.