Skip to main content

Profiles

Natural Resources Defense Council

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is an American nonprofit organization based in New York City, New York.

History

NRDC was founded in 1970 by Whitney North Seymour Jr. and Stephen Duggan, environmental lawyers who successfully prevented Consolidated Edison from constructing a new hydroelectric power station near the Hudson River.[1][2][3] Along with David Sive,[4] the pair represented a dozen citizens in Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission, a landmark case “credited with launching the modern environmental movement.”[5]

Following their victory, Seymour, Duggan and Sive sought funding from the Ford Foundation to launch the NRDC to pursue broader environmental defense efforts. The foundation offered NRDC seed funding on the condition that it appoint Laurance Rockefeller and other oil-rich conservatives as trustees, and merge with a similar effort led by a group of recent Yale Law School graduates.[6] This group included Gus Speth, Richard Ayres, Edward Strohbehn Jr. and John Bryson.[7] John H. Adams served as founding director.[8]

As a supporter of the defeated Con Ed power plant, Laurance Rockefeller's leadership position on the NRDC granted him the ability to influence the activities of the nascent organization, including “coerc[ing] the NRDC into dropping its controversial strategy of suing corporations.”[9] The Rockefeller Brothers Fund began funding the NRDC shortly thereafter.[10]

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined the NRDC in 1986 as an attorney.[11] He left the organization in 2017.

Organization

The NRDC's Center for Campaigns & Organizing (CC&O) oversees the NRDC Action Fund, "an affiliated but separate 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, which engages in advocacy and political (including electoral) activities for NRDC."[12] It is also affiliated with Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), led by NRDC trustee Nicole Lederer.[13][14]

Personnel

Current and honorary members of the NRDC's team are listed on the organization's website.[15]

Name Position Notes
Manish Bapna President and Chief Executive Officer[16] World Resources Institute (WRI), Global Commission on Adaptation (GCA), NDC Partnership, New Climate Economy, Bank Information Center (BIC), World Bank, McKinsey & Company, China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), Meridian Institute, Natural Resources Governance Institute (NRGI)
Tisha Alfred Chief Real Estate and Workplace Strategy Officer -
Robyn Arville Chief People and DEI Officer Wikimedia Foundation, Public Library of Science (PLOS), Humanity United
Mitchell Bernard Chief Counsel American College of Environmental Lawyers, United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York
Susan Casey-Lefkowitz Chief of Staff Environmental Law Institute (ELI), IUCN Environmental Law Centre
Yamide Dagnet Senior Vice President, International Open Society Foundations, World Resources Institute
Veronica Foo Chief Financial Officer Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM)
Christy Goldfuss Executive Director Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, National Ocean Council (NOC), Center for American Progress (CAP), National Park Service (NPS), United States House Committee on Natural Resources
Ashok Gupta Chief Program Officer New York City Sustainability Advisory Board, New York City Energy Policy Task Force
Ticora V. Jones Chief Science Officer United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Materials Research Society (MRS)
Mollie Marsh-Heine Chief Development Officer Denver Public Schools, Outward Bound, Nature Conservancy, Earthjustice
Gina McCarthy President and Chief Executive Officer (former)[17] United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Melissa Lin Perrella Chief Equity and Justice Officer -
Irina Petrova General Counsel Simpson Thacher & Bartlett
Shelley Poticha Managing Director, Regional Impact, Center for Campaigns & Organizing[18] Global Urban Development, Partnership for Sustainable Communities, Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities (OSHC), Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU)
Vivek Sawhney Chief Information Officer and International Operations Young Adult Institute (YAI), IntraLinks
Douglass Sims Managing Director, Green Finance and Economic Development -
Matthew Tejada Senior Vice President, Environmental Health Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (OEJECR), National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC), Air Alliance Houston, Texas Public Interest Research Group (TexPIRG), Peace Corps
Michael Wall Chief Litigation Officer United States Department of Justice, American College of Environmental Lawyers
Andrew Wetzler Senior Vice President, Nature -
Kristin Wilson-Palmer Chief Communications Officer Edelman, Insurance Information Institute (III), AARP, National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), America's Public Television Stations (APTS), Brodeur Partners, Kamber Group
Jackie Wong Senior Vice President, Climate and Energy United States Department of Energy, Bain Capital, McKinsey & Company
Ed Yoon Chief External Affairs Officer NRDC Action Fund
John H. Adams Founding Director[8:1] Open Space Institute, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University School of Law
Stephen Duggan Founding Chairman[2:1] Simpson Thacher & Bartlett
Richard Ayres Co-founder[7:1] Ayres Law Group
John Bryson Co-founder[7:2] United States Department of Commerce
Whitney North Seymour Jr. Co-founder[3:1] United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York
David Sive Co-founder[4:1] Sive, Paget & Riesel (SPR)
Gus Speth Co-founder[7:3] World Resources Institute (WRI)
Edward Strohbehn Jr. Co-founder[7:4] Morgan, Lewis & Bockius
Scott Burns Leadership Committee member[19] COVID Collaborative, Sundance Institute
Kathleen Welch Chair of the Board of Trustees Corridor Partners
Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr. Chair Emeritus Brennan Center for Justice, Cravath, Swaine & Moore
Mary P. Moran Treasurer -
Katherine Adams Trustee Apple, Beaverkill Valley Land Trust
Geeta Aiyer Trustee Boston Common Asset Management
Claire Bernard Trustee Mariposa Foundation
Sarah Cogan Trustee Simpson Thacher & Bartlett
Nathaniel Dean Trustee Capula Investment Management
Leonardo DiCaprio Trustee Earth Alliance
John Echohawk Trustee Native American Rights Fund
Catherine Coleman Flowers Trustee Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (CREEJ)
Lisa Hall Trustee Apollo Global Management
Jeremy Kahan Trustee North Peak Capital
Nicole Lederer Trustee Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2)
Laura Lin Trustee Simpson Thacher & Bartlett
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Trustee -
Kelly Chapman Meyer Trustee American Heart Association Teaching Gardens
Peter Morton Trustee 510 Development Corporation
Wendy Kelman Neu Trustee Hugo Neu Corporation
Frederica Perera Trustee Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health
Lynn Price Trustee Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Diana Propper de Callejon Trustee Cranemere
Robert Redford Trustee -
Bill Richardson Trustee (former)[20] United States Department of Energy, Freedom House
Elene Rios Trustee National Hispanic Medical Association, National Hispanic Health Foundation
Tom Roush Trustee -
Tom Soto Trustee Latimer Partners
Gerald Torres Trustee Yale School of the Environment
Margret Trilli Trustee Impact Assets
David Vladeck Trustee Georgetown University Law Center
David Welch Trustee Infinera
Daniel Yates Trustee Dandelion Energy
Alan F. Horn Honorary Chair Emeritus of the Board of Trustees Walt Disney Studios
Daniel R. Tishman Honorary Chair Emeritus of the Board of Trustees Tishman Realty
Frances Beinecke Honorary Trustee -
Anita Bekenstein Honorary Trustee -
Anna Scott Carter Honorary Trustee Clean by Design
Laurie David Honorary Trustee -
Sylvia Earle Honorary Trustee Deep Ocean Exploration and Research (DOER)
Robert J. Fisher Honorary Trustee Gap
Chuck Koob Honorary Trustee Simpson Thacher & Bartlett
Philip Korsant Honorary Trustee Long Light Capital
Ruben Kraiem Honorary Trustee Covington & Burling
Shelly Malkin Honorary Trustee New York Restoration Project
Josie Merck Honorary Trustee Ocean View Foundation
Laurance Rockefeller Jr. Honorary Trustee; Trustee (former)[10:1] -
Jonathan F. P. Rose Honorary Trustee Jonathan Rose Companies
Christine Russell Honorary Trustee Columbia Foundation, Gaia Fund
William H. Schlesinger Honorary Trustee Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
James Taylor Honorary Trustee -
George Woodwell Honorary Trustee Woodwell Climate Research Center
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Senior Attorney (former)[21] Children's Health Defense

Partners

NRDC is or has been partnered with:

Additionally, NRDC has been a client of Capalino,[24] Democracy Partners[25] and Eastern Research Group (ERG).[26]

Funding

NRDC has received funding from:[27]

  • Brian Tomasik
  • Ford Foundation[6:1]
  • John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
  • John Merck Fund
  • Nathan Cummings Foundation
  • Quixote Foundation
  • Rockefeller Brothers Fund[10:2]
  • Steven and Michele Kirsch Foundation[28]
  • Surdna Foundation
  • Walton Family Foundation
  • William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
  • William E. Simon Foundation

Activities

NRDC has provided funding to:

Further reading

  1. Collection: Natural Resources Defense Council records, MS 1965. Archives at Yale. Retrieved November 3, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20231103152444/https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/5167 ↩︎

  2. Saxon, W. (1998, November 13). Stephen Duggan, Environmentalist, Dies at 89. The New York Times. http://archive.today/2023.08.24-221206/https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/13/nyregion/stephen-duggan-environmentalist-dies-at-89.html ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. Whitney Seymour Papers, 1966-1968. M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives. Retrieved September 1, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230901181459/https://archives.albany.edu/description/catalog/apap278 ↩︎ ↩︎

  4. Robinson, N. A. (2014, March 26). 2014 Lloyd K. Garrison Lecture. Pace University School of Law. https://web.archive.org/web/20240424193747/https://law.pace.edu/sites/default/files/environmental/SiveSaxGarrisonLectureMar2014.pdf ↩︎ ↩︎

  5. The Scenic Hudson Decision. Marist Environmental History Project. Retrieved April 29, 2024, from http://archive.today/2024.04.29-172823/https://archives.marist.edu/mehp/scenicdecision.html ↩︎

  6. Berman, D. M., & O’Connor, J. T. (1996). Who Owns the Sun? People, Politics, and the Struggle for a Solar Economy (p. 107). White River Junction; Chelsea Green Publishing. https://archive.org/details/whoownssunpeople00berm/page/106/mode/2up ↩︎ ↩︎

  7. Law School Honors Four Alumni Who Helped Create the Natural Resources Defense Council. (2010, May 7). YaleNews. https://web.archive.org/web/20240228183555/https://news.yale.edu/2010/05/07/law-school-honors-four-alumni-who-helped-create-natural-resources-defense-council ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  8. John Adams, Founding Director. Natural Resources Defense Council. Retrieved April 24, 2024, from http://archive.today/2024.04.24-182708/https://www.nrdc.org/bio/john-adams ↩︎ ↩︎

  9. Barker, M. (2008). The Liberal Foundations of Environmentalism: Revisiting the Rockefeller-Ford Connection. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 19(2), 15–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455750802091495 ↩︎

  10. Conservation and the Environment. Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Retrieved March 16, 2023, from http://archive.today/2023.03.16-142242/https://www.rbf.org/about/about-us/conservation-and-environment ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  11. Lord, D. (2018, June 5). Robert Kennedy assassination: What happened to RFK’s children after he was killed? The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. http://archive.today/2023.05.08-221611/https://www.ajc.com/news/national/robert-kennedy-assassination-what-happened-rfk-children-after-was-killed/Nu7ndfLSIy7FHbE5tCCgTN/ ↩︎

  12. Center for Campaigns & Organizing. Natural Resources Defense Council. Retrieved April 28, 2024, from https://web.archive.org/web/20240428184346/https://www.nrdc.org/center-campaigns-organizing ↩︎

  13. About Us. Natural Resources Defense Council. Retrieved April 28, 2024, from https://web.archive.org/web/20240428184401/https://www.nrdc.org/about ↩︎

  14. Founders. E2. Retrieved March 9, 2024, from https://web.archive.org/web/20240309175656/https://e2.org/founders/ ↩︎

  15. Leadership. Natural Resources Defense Council. Retrieved April 25, 2024, from https://web.archive.org/web/20240425232431/https://www.nrdc.org/leadership ↩︎

  16. Manish Bapna, President & Chief Executive Officer. Natural Resources Defense Council. Retrieved April 25, 2024, from http://archive.today/2024.04.25-232951/https://www.nrdc.org/bio/manish-bapna ↩︎

  17. Gina McCarthy, Former President. Natural Resources Defense Council. Retrieved April 28, 2024, from https://web.archive.org/web/20240428221150/https://www.nrdc.org/bio/gina-mccarthy ↩︎

  18. Shelley Poticha, Managing Director, Regional Impact, Center for Campaigns & Organizing. Natural Resources Defense Council. Retrieved February 3, 2024, from https://web.archive.org/web/20240203094750/https://www.nrdc.org/bio/shelley-poticha ↩︎

  19. Scott Burns. COVID Collaborative. Retrieved July 24, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230724202019/https://www.covidcollaborative.us/team/scott-burns ↩︎

  20. Former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson Elected to NRDC Board of Trustees. (2001, June 11). Natural Resources Defense Council. https://web.archive.org/web/20231129001137/https://www.nrdc.org/press-releases/former-energy-secretary-bill-richardson-elected-nrdc-board-trustees ↩︎

  21. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on “The Junk Science of George W. Bush” in the Nation. (2004, February 20). Natural Resources Defense Council. http://archive.today/2023.06.05-092042/https://www.nrdc.org/press-releases/robert-f-kennedy-jr-junk-science-george-w-bush-nation ↩︎

  22. Stand in Solidarity with Charlottesville. Indivisible Guide. Retrieved January 10, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20220110175630/https://act.indivisibleguide.com/event/stand-in-solidarity-with-charlottesville/search/ ↩︎

  23. Recent Partners. Resource Media. Retrieved August 30, 2004, from http://archive.today/2004.08.30-191658/http://resource-media.org/Partners/ ↩︎

  24. Clients. Capalino. Retrieved December 9, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20231209011424/https://www.capalino.com/clients/ ↩︎

  25. Client List. Democracy Partners. Retrieved July 26, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230726023456/https://www.democracypartners.com/?q=page/client-list ↩︎

  26. About ERG. ERG (Eastern Research Group Inc.). Retrieved May 17, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230517181802/https://www.erg.com/about ↩︎

  27. Natural Resources Defense Council donations received. Vipul Naik. Retrieved April 28, 2024, from https://web.archive.org/web/20240428234617/https://donations.vipulnaik.com/donee.php?donee=Natural+Resources+Defense+Council ↩︎

  28. Kirsch, S. T., Kirsch, M. van B., & Gwynn, K. 2005-2006 Annual Report. Kirsch Foundation. Retrieved April 19, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20220419131010/http://www.kirschfoundation.org/who/ar2006/Kirsch_AR06.pdf ↩︎

  29. Donor Thanks. Sierra Club. Retrieved January 4, 2023, from http://archive.today/2023.01.04-212113/https://vault.sierraclub.org/foundation-annual-report-2019/donor-thanks.html ↩︎