Prior to her appointment in 2018, Toddi Steelman served as the first permanent executive director of the University of Saskatchewan’s School of Environment and Sustainability, after serving 11 years on the faculty in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University. She also was a faculty member in the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver from 1997 to 2001. She holds a Ph.D. from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, a Master in Public Affairs from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Sciences and International Studies from West Virginia University.
Working at the intersection of science, policy and decision making, her expertise in environmental and natural resource policy is well-recognized nationally and internationally. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and Canadian Tri Agencies as well as a variety of federal and state agencies. The author of four books, Steelman has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, as well as opinion and editorial pieces in Nature, the Globe and Mail, and the Los Angeles Times.