Will Rogers

At Johns Hopkins, Will Rogers is a lecturer in the MA in Global Security Studies program where he calls on more than 15 years of experience as a national security and foreign policy professional in government and civil society, with a specialization in the practice of climate change and energy security.

From January 2022 to January 2025, Rogers served in the Biden-Harris Administration as the Senior Climate Advisor to the Secretary of the Army, the first individual to ever hold the position. In this role, he served as the Army’s principal advisor on climate change risks, preparedness and energy resilience, advising senior leaders on ways to leverage the Department of the Army’s $165 billion buying power to strengthen U.S. climate and energy resilience goals in a manner that improves the Army’s warfighting mission. This work supported the Amy’s goals of developing of a cleaner, more resilient, and reliable transmission grid; demonstrating advanced energy generation and storage technologies; and harnessing natural infrastructure to build healthier and more durable military communities.

From April 2013 to January 2022, Rogers served as the Deputy Legislative Director and National Security Advisor to Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii where he led the Senator’s work as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee. During his time in the Senate, Rogers wrote several prominent bipartisan climate security bills that he helped Senator Schatz enact into law. This included legislation regulating how the Department of Defense manages installation and operational energy vulnerabilities, and how it incorporates current and future threats of climate change into installation master planning – including military facility siting, design, and construction.

Before serving in government, Rogers was a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a national security and defense policy think tank where he led the Center’s research program on climate change, energy, and national security. He also worked as a researcher at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Rogers holds an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a BA in Political Science-International Relations from the University of California, San Diego, where he concentrated in U.S. national security and foreign policy. He also studied abroad at the University of Auckland, in Auckland, New Zealand, where he was a recipient of the 2007 Political Studies Senior Prize Scholarship.