Thomas Peterson

Tom Peterson, President and CEO of the Center for Climate Strategies, Inc.; Adjunct Professor and Teaching Fellow, Johns Hopkins University.

Tom has 37 years’ professional experience in government, business, and the nonprofit sectors and 15 years’ experience developing and teaching graduate courses. His areas of expertise include consensus building and collaborative policy development; economic and financial analysis and mechanisms; multi objective energy and natural resources problem solving; and information and education. In addition to serving as founder and CEO of the Center for Climate Strategies for the past 16 years, he previously served as a senior climate change advisor to the White House, as a legislative fellow in the US Senate, as an economist with the US EPA, as a Vice President for a Washington, D.C. investment firm, and as a Division Chief for a US state conservation agency.

He previously served as an adjunct professor at the Penn State School of Law and the George Mason University School of Conflict Resolution and Analysis, and since 2010 has taught at the Johns Hopkins University Energy Policy and Climate Program and the Global Security Center. Tom has worked on a variety of capacity building and climate change policy development projects in Africa, China and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the United States since 2007. Tom holds an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin (finance and marketing) as well as an MEM from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Duke University (economics and policy) and a BS in Biology from the College of William and Mary (economics concentration). He is based in Washington, D.C.