Regina Buono

Regina M. Buono is a Senior Attorney. Prior to joining ELI in 2023, Regina worked in various positions in water law and governance, including in private law practice and for a legislative agency in Austin, Texas; consulting with an international boutique water strategy firm; and as the Baker Botts Fellow in Energy and Environmental Regulatory Affairs at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, where she remains a non-resident scholar. Her research includes work on water governance, water and energy, urban resilience, and adaptive governance and law. She participated in the 2019 Young Scientists Summer Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, working with the Governance in Transition subgroup of the Risk and Resilience section to advance research on law and nature-based solutions, and served on the board of advisors to an EU-funded research consortium working to understand the insurance value of nature-based solutions. Regina holds a Ph.D. in public policy and a J.D. from The University of Texas at Austin, an M.Sc. in water science and governance from King’s College London, and a B.A. in international relations and political science and a B.A. in Spanish from the University of Arkansas.