Kristine Svinicki

Kristine Svinicki is an internationally recognized policy expert and innovator with over 30 years of public service at the state and federal levels. She has a demonstrated record of success gathering diverse coalitions to move solutions to their most complex energy and environmental challenges from concept to reality. A firm believer that diversity in all forms – thought, experience, perspective and background – is essential to pushing past outmoded paradigms, she shares the view that a committed, collaborative effort across all elements of the nuclear enterprise will be necessary for advanced nuclear technologies to occupy fully their essential role in creating a global energy future to elevate the standard of living of every human citizen.

Appointed to her role by three successive United States presidents, Svinicki is the longest-serving member of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (U.S. NRC) in the agency’s history, having stepped down as Chairman in early 2021. Hallmarks of her distinguished tenure include growing a culture of “swing for the fences” transformative thinking in agency processes and advancing the use of previously untapped technologies to surmount the challenges of the COVID-19 public health emergency and deliver sustained assurance of nuclear safety and security to the American public.

Prior to her appointment to the U.S. NRC, Svinicki served as an expert and policy advisor for over a decade to members of the United States Senate on topics ranging from energy to national security. She previously managed nuclear research and development programs at the U.S. Department of Energy and worked as an energy analyst for the State of Wisconsin.

Svinicki holds a Bachelor of Science in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Michigan, where she currently serves as Adjunct Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences in the College of Engineering. She also sits on the board of TerraPower.

She was selected as a Brookings Institution Fellow in 1997 and as a John C. Stennis Congressional Fellow of the 108th U.S. Congress.