DAN REICHER
Senior Research Scholar, Stanford Woods Institute for Environment
Former Advisor to President Obama
Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy, Clinton Administration
Former Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives, Google
Executive Director, Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance
Dan’s students joke that he has an Innovation-Policy-Finance triangle tattooed on his back. It is at the core of what he teaches and believes in, and he uses this shape to show the strength of these three fields working in collaboration. He gives the example of his home state, “California has been a real leader in advancing clean energy through technology, policy, finance. It also has created the most robust economy in the United States and the fifth largest economy in the world. This is a great example of a place that is both doing good and doing well at the same time. You can set aggressive policy, you can make major investments in clean energy, and at the same time, you can have a growing economy that puts people to work. So it's not an either/or equation. Either we're going to go down a greener route or we're going to have a robust economy. California is the example with 45 million people of how you can bring these two together.”
Dan brings a wealth of experience and insight to Empowered, from the three US presidents he served to Google to Stanford Law School. He has become an expert in the intersection of universities, the private, and the public sectors, and uses that expertise to inform students and world leaders alike.
He’s an avid kayaker and while in undergrad, he was part of the first team to navigate the length of the Rio Grande - all 1,885 miles of it. His love for nature dates back to his childhood and continues to motivate his work to this day.