Until early 2011, Bowles served as Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs of Massachusetts. As Secretary, he created the first state cabinet agency encompassing both energy regulation and environmental protection and oversaw six line agencies that employ staff of more than 3,000. He overhauled utility and environmental regulation to make Massachusetts the #1 ranked state in energy efficiency and a top solar market. Bowles also set the highest standards in the nation on greenhouse gas emissions and building codes.

Earlier in his career, Bowles served as principal international environment and natural resources policy advisor on the White House staff for President Bill Clinton, holding the posts of Senior Director of Global Environmental Affairs at the National Security Council and Associate Director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. He was a Senior Advisor to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and a Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Before that, he spent eight years as a top executive at Conservation International where he played a key role in creation of the four million acre Central Suriname Nature Reserve, one of the world’s largest tropical forest nature reserves.

Bowles co-edited Footprints in the Jungle (Oxford University Press) on infrastructure development and land conservation and has written broadly on energy, environment, conservation and sustainability in both professional journals such as Science and in the popular media including the New York Times. He received his A.B. cum laude from Harvard College and a Masters degree from Oxford University. He holds an honorary doctorate from Emerson College. Read Less ^