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CPR Member Scholars Tapped by Biden Administration for Key Justice and Environmental Advisory Positions

At CPR, our Member Scholars are integral to our research and advocacy work, driving our organization to address some of the most pressing issues facing our country. As the climate crisis grows increasingly urgent, it’s no surprise that President Joe Biden has invited four CPR scholars — leaders in climate and energy justice, natural resources, and environmental law — to serve in his administration.

These scholars are on leave from CPR while serving in the administration. Below, we highlight their new appointments and past contributions to CPR.

Shalanda Baker

Shalanda H. Baker, Secretarial Advisor on Equity, and Deputy Director for Energy Justice, U.S. Department of Energy

A leading expert in climate, energy, and justice, Baker is making history as the nation's first-ever deputy director for energy justice at the Energy Department. Her role as deputy director is to ensure that the burdens and benefits of energy projects are equitably distributed across communities. Baker’s success in this position is made evident by her recent nomination to be promoted to Director of the Office of Minority Economic Impact.

As a CPR Member Scholar, Baker contributed to CPR’s 2020 report on a just transition to a clean energy economy and its accompanying video series. Baker is the co-founder and former co-director of the Initiative for Energy Justice, which provides law and policy resources to advocates and policymakers pushing for an equitable transition to renewable energy. She is also the author of Revolutionary Power: An Activist’s Guide to the Energy Transition

Before her appointment to the Energy Department, Baker taught law, public policy, and urban affairs at Northeastern University in Boston and worked with the university’s Global Resilience Institute in energy justice, renewable energy development, and Indigenous rights. Baker earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from the U.S. Air Force Academy, her law degree from Northeastern University, and master’s in law from the University of Wisconsin. 

Maxine Burkett

Maxine Burkett, Senior Advisor with the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, U.S. Department of State

In her new position, Burkett supports former Secretary of State John Kerry in his role as the first-ever foreign policy envoy tasked with leading global diplomatic engagement on climate change. 

As a CPR scholar, Burkett contributed to a number of reports and participated in our 2020 webinar on the effects of climate migration on labor and communities and contributed to this year’s blog series on Women’s History Month

Burkett’s appointment follows her role as a law professor at the University of Hawai'i in Manoa. At UHM, Burkett specialized in law and policy related to oceans, climate change, climate migration, and international environmental governance and wrote extensively about the impacts of climate change on frontline communities. 

Burkett also led early efforts to promote adaptation to climate change in the Pacific Islands as director of the Center for Island Climate Adaptation and Policy, where she provided program and policy support to local governments. She studied at Williams and Exeter colleges and Oxford University, and received her law degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

Sarah Krakoff

Sarah Krakoff, Deputy Solicitor for Parks and Wildlife, U.S. Department of the Interior

Having dedicated her career to environmental and justice work, Krakoff now serves as a representative of the U.S. National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. 

Before her appointment, she contributed to CPR’s 2020 report on a just transition to a clean energy economy and participated in our 2021 Women’s History Month blog series

While working with CPR, Krakoff taught law at the University of Colorado Law School, where she specialized in Native American and natural resources law and environmental justice. Krakoff directed the American Indian Law Clinic at Colorado University and ensured its permanent future funding. She is also founder of the Acequia Assistance Project, which provides low- and no-cost legal assistance and educational resources to Colorado communities that depend on acequias, or ditches, for communal sources of water. Krakoff earned her law degree at the University of California at Berkeley and her bachelor’s degree at Yale University.

Emily Hammond

Emily Hammond, Deputy General Counsel for Litigation and Enforcement, U.S. Department of Energy

Hammond’s leadership role at the Energy Department follows a long history of work at the intersection of law, policy, and the environment. 

At CPR, Hammond co-authored a number of reports, including a brief on an appellate court decision upholding a key regulatory initiative to protect the Chesapeake Bay and a report on proposed reforms to laws regulating exposure to toxic chemicals. 

Previously, Hammond served as senior associate dean for academic affairs and professor of law at George Washington University, where they specialized in energy, environmental, and administrative law. Their research and policy work centered on issues ranging from transparency and public participation in the regulatory process to mitigation of climate change. Hammond is also a former environmental engineer, having earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Virginia Tech in addition to their law degree from the University of Georgia. 

These scholars’ appointments are well earned. Though their contributions to CPR will be missed, we know that they carry with them CPR’s vision of thriving communities on a resilient planet. We wish them well in their new roles!

Showing 2,827 results

Clarissa Libertelli | July 29, 2021

CPR Member Scholars Tapped by Biden Administration for Key Justice and Environmental Advisory Positions

President Joe Biden has invited four CPR scholars — leaders in climate and energy justice, natural resources, and environmental law — to serve in his administration.

Joel A. Mintz | July 22, 2021

The Hill Op-Ed: Leadership and the Challenge of Climate Change

Recent events have dramatized the urgent need for prompt and bold action to respond to climate change. Raging rivers in Germany and Belgium, unheard of "heat domes" over large sections of North America, and uncontrolled wildfires and flooding around the globe, have made it absolutely clear that humankind must quickly limit the emission of greenhouse gases and adapt to the increasingly calamitous consequences of climate disruption. In view of this situation, what is and ought to be the substance of environmental leadership?

Karen Sokol | July 22, 2021

What Fossil Fuel Industry Deception Tells Us About How to Survive the Climate Emergency

On the last day of June, an entire village in Canada was engulfed in a wildfire after the country recorded its highest temperature ever. That same day, Greenpeace UK's investigative team published a striking tape of two Exxon senior employees' candid accounts of the fossil fuel industry's surreptitious lobbying efforts to undermine climate action.

James Goodwin | July 21, 2021

Biden Said He Wants to ‘Modernize Regulatory Review.’ The EPA’s Chemical Disaster Rule is a Great Place to Start.

The Biden administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently seeking public input on its efforts to revamp an important Clean Air Act program called the Risk Management Plan (RMP) rule for facilities that produce, store, or use large amounts of dangerous chemicals. It is meant to prevent catastrophes -- like the 2017 Arkema explosion in Crosby, Texas -- which not only put human lives and health in danger (especially for the communities of color that are disproportionately overrepresented in the shadows of these facilities), but also cause costly disruption for local economies.

David Driesen | July 20, 2021

The Specter of Dictatorship Behind the Unitary Executive Theory

Environmentalists have complained for years about presidential control of the administrative agencies charged with protecting the environment, seeing it as a way of thwarting proper administration of environmentally protective laws. But the U.S. Supreme Court in two recent decisions -- Seila Law v. CFPB and Collins v. Yellen -- made presidential control over administrative agencies a constitutional requirement (with limited and unstable exceptions) by embracing the unitary executive theory, which views administrative agencies as presidential lackeys. My new book, The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power, shows that the unitary executive theory is not only bad for environmental policy, but a threat to democracy’s survival, upon which environmental policy and all other sensible policy depends.

Colin Hughes | July 19, 2021

Environmental Justice and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Why the EPA Needs a Funding Boost

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan recently announced that $50 million from the American Rescue Plan will go toward environmental justice programs at the agency. This award will be accompanied by another $50 million to enhance air quality monitoring to target health disparities. This funding will double the amount of grant dollars for EPA’s environmental justice programs by adding $16.7 million in grants and funding for other programs such as school bus electrification, expanded environmental enforcement, and drinking water safety improvements.

Alina Gonzalez, Minor Sinclair | July 15, 2021

Georgia’s Activists of Color Offer Hope for Meaningful Action on Climate Justice

President Joe Biden is breaking the status quo: He has pledged to write a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change. Unlike any other president, he has outlined specific and aggressive targets to reduce carbon emissions and has backed them up with a $2 trillion plan to fight climate change. In the meantime, our climate continues to change rapidly and dramatically, raising the ever more urgent question: Will the politics of climate change shift in time to curb its worst effects, including in states like Georgia? We think it will.

Karen Sokol | July 13, 2021

The Strategic and Moral Failures of the Biden Administration’s International Climate Initiatives

"When you are at the verge of the abyss, you must be very careful about your next step, because if the next step is in the wrong direction, you will fall." So warned United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in a recent interview on NBC Nightly News. He was calling on the world's wealthiest nations to meet their obligations under the Paris climate accords to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels and to help developing countries to transition and to adapt to threats that can no longer be averted. Wealthy nations simply must meet these obligations to achieve the Paris goal of holding global temperature rise to a sustainable level.

Minor Sinclair | July 8, 2021

Newest Board Members Bring Environmental Protection and Climate Justice Expertise

Executive Director Minor Sinclair welcomes three new board members to the Center for Progressive Reform and highlights their diverse, critical voices and perspectives.