Peter Shumlin

Peter Shumlin served three terms as the 81st governor of the state of Vermont. He was a member of the Vermont House of Representatives from 1990 to 1993, and served as State Senator for the Windham County from 1993 to 2003 and from 2007 to 2011, and he was elected president of the senate for 10 of those years. Shumlin served as the chair of the Democratic Governors Association during his first two terms.

During his time in office, Governor Shumlin established Vermont as a leader on progressive policies, making the state the first to guarantee universal pre-kindergarten education for all 3 and 4-year-old children, pass a mandatory GMO labeling law, and achieve near universal healthcare coverage with the lowest rate of uninsured in the country. Under his leadership, Vermont consistently ranked among the top states in solar energy jobs per capita and enacted a number of laws to boost renewable energy production and combat climate change. Because of Vermont’s leadership, Governor Shumlin was invited by President Obama to the Paris Climate Summit to push for a global climate agreement.

Governor Shumlin turned the nation’s eyes to the problem of opiate and heroin addiction by dedicating his entire 2014 State of the State Address to the issue and pushing for policies to treat addiction as the healthcare crisis that it is.

A committed entrepreneur, Shumlin is the longtime co-director of Putney Student Travel, National Geographic Student Expeditions, and Smithsonian Student Travel, sending high school age students on educational programs and service projects across the globe. He is a Director of The Scotts-MiracleGro Company, has served as a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and has taught at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health as the Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow.