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CLEANPOWER in Color
CLEANPOWER in Color

    Shalanda H. Baker, JD, LLM (she/her/hers)

    Vice Provost for Sustainability and Climate Action, Professor of Sustainability and Environment
    University of Michigan

    Shalanda H. Baker is the inaugural Vice Provost for Sustainability and Climate Action at the University of Michigan and a globally recognized scholar of energy justice. Before joining U-M, Shalanda served as the Senate-confirmed Director of the Office of Energy Justice and Equity, Secretarial Advisor on Equity, and Chief Diversity Officer at the United States Department of Energy. She served as the architect of the agency’s equity and justice efforts. Prior to that, she served in the Biden-Harris Administration as the nation’s first Deputy Director for Energy Justice.

    Shalanda has spent over a decade researching the equity dimensions of the global transition from fossil fuels to cleaner energy resources. Before joining the Biden-Harris Administration, she was a Professor of Law, Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, where she taught renewable energy law, energy policy, and the energy transition. While at Northeastern, she co-founded and co-directed the Initiative for Energy Justice (www.iejusa.org), which provides technical law and policy support to communities on the frontlines of climate change. She also served as an associate professor of law at the University of Hawai’i William S. Richardson School of Law, where she founded the Energy Justice Program, and previously taught at the University of San Francisco School of Law.

    Shalanda holds a B.S. in Political Science from the United States Air Force Academy, a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law, and an LL.M. from the University of Wisconsin School of Law, where she was a William H. Hastie Fellow. In 2015, she received a 2016–17 Fulbright-García Robles grant to study Mexico’s energy reform, climate change, and Indigenous rights. Her book, Revolutionary Power: An Activist’s Guide to the Energy Transition (Island Press, 2021), argues that energy policy is the next domain to advance civil rights.

    Presentation(s):