John Devillars

John DeVillars is a clean energy and environmental professional with substantial leadership experience in both the public and private sectors. Mr. DeVillars’ public service career includes service as Secretary of the Environment for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Chair of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, and Chief of Operations for Governor Michael Dukakis. In 1993 he was appointed New England Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency by President Bill Clinton, a post he served in until 2000. He has received numerous awards for his environmental service, including the President's Award of the Nature Conservancy, given annually for national leadership in environmental affairs.

His private sector career includes founding and leading the Environmental Management practice for the national accounting firm Coopers and Lybrand (PWC); serving as Executive Vice President of Brownfields Recovery Corporation, a brownfields real estate investment and development company with assets in Massachusetts and the U.S. Virgin Islands; and as Lecturer on Environmental Leadership at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mr. DeVillars serves on numerous public and private company and non‐profit boards including as a member of the Executive Committee of the New England Clean Energy Council; Chair of the Advisory Board of the Acadia Center, a leading research and advocacy group on the forefront of efforts to combat global climate change; Chairman's Council of the Trustees of Reservations; and Director of the Massachusetts Environmental Trust. In 2012 he was appointed by the United States EPA Administrator to serve on the agency’s National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology. For the 2016-2017 academic year, in addition to exercising his responsibilities on behalf of BlueWave, Mr. DeVillars served as a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. As a senior fellow at the Center, he focused on the role of public utilities in meeting the climate change challenge.

Mr. DeVillars earned his MPA degree from Harvard University and his BA from the University of Pennsylvania.