Biography

Dr. Michel Gelobter served on the board of directors at Redefining Progress since 1995 and was Executive Director from July 2001 through November 2006.

Dr. Gelobter has experience as an academic, an activist, and an administrator. Prior to joining the staff at Redefining Progress, he was a professor in the Graduate Department of Public Administration at Rutgers University. During the same period, he founded and ran CAPE, or Community/Academic Partnership for the Environment, a regional research entity spanning New Jersey, New York, and Puerto Rico. Prior to that, Dr. Gelobter started the Environmental Policy Program at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

From 1990 to 1992, Dr. Gelobter was Director of Environmental Quality for the City of New York, and an Assistant Commissioner for its Department of Environmental Protection. He also served as the environmental and health issues director during David Dinkins' successful mayoral campaign in 1989. Gelobter was a Congressional Black Caucus Fellow and served with the U.S. House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee from 1988-89.

Dr. Gelobter earned his B.A. in conservation and resource studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 1984. He earned a M.S., with an emphasis on the environment and the poor in industrialized countries, from U.C. Berkeley in 1986. He earned his Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group in 1993 and did his doctoral research on race and income distribution of air pollution in the United States. He has also written more broadly about environmental justice, lead poisoning, global warming, sustainability, commons management, and the relationship between environmental protection and tourism in developing countries.

Dr. Gelobter was the founding chair of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council Subcommittee on Air and Water and served there for six years. He presently serves on the boards of the Natural Resources Defense Council; the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment; Ceres; the Telluride Association; Next Generation, and Redefining Progress, and the Advisory Council of the Environmental Leadership Program.