KaREN E. SKELTON

Visiting Scholar, Precourt Institute, Stanford; Former Senior Policy Advisor to U.S. Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, and to John Podesta, Senior Advisor to the President for International Climate Policy

Karen Skelton has advised U.S. Presidents, Vice Presidents, U.S. Cabinet Secretaries, Governors, First Ladies, Fortune 100 corporations, philanthropies, Boards of Directors for 35 years.

Most recently, Skelton served as a Senior Policy Advisor to both Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and the President’s top Climate Diplomat, John Podesta. During this time, Skelton played a key role in managing political, policy, and communication strategies to accelerate the nation’s industrial policy transition to a clean energy economy. Skelton collaborated with private sector stakeholders to gain access to hundreds of billions of dollars in grants, tax credits, loans, and other investments that address the climate crisis, rebuild American manufacturing, and lower costs for consumers and businesses.

Skelton’s work included co-leading the establishment of the Interagency Working Group on Coal & Power Plant Communities & Economic Revitalization (See www.Energycommunities.gov), now responsible for delivering over $170 billion in federal resources to help revitalize America’s energy communities; organizing private and public sector engagement in key states as Congress considered support for the Inflation Reduction Act; managing a White House effort to build a coalition of philanthropies which have contributed so far over $3 Billion in pooled funds and aligned tables to implement the President’s climate package; heading the inaugural launch of the DOE’s Foundation of Energy Security and Innovation.

Karen Skelton joined the Biden-Harris Administration from California, where she spent two decades running and selling two companies. Skelton spent a decade as the founder of Skelton Strategies, a policy and political consulting firm working on energy, climate, technology, economic justice, and women’s health. Skelton served as Governor Jerry Brown's Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Global Climate Action Summit, where she drove high-level corporate commitments designed to combat climate change. With Maria Shriver, Skelton founded and managed a series of groundbreaking reports on the transformational role of women in American life, including an Emmy-nominated documentary. Clients included Governor Schwarzenegger’s Women’s Conference, HBO, Bloom Energy, Segway, the National Basketball Association, UCLA’s Baseball team, T-Mobile, Google, YouTube, Amazon, John Doerr and Mayor Willie Brown.

Previously, Skelton served in the Clinton-Gore Administration as Vice President Al Gore’s first Political Director and Deputy Political Director to the President, in the U.S. Departments of Justice as a prosecutor, and at the United States Department of Transportation as Chief Counsel of the Federal Highway Administration.

Skelton earned her B.A. in English with Honors from UCLA, a Master’s degree from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a J.D. from the UC Berkeley Law School.