Samuel Thernstrom

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Samuel Thernstrom is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Energy Innovation Reform Project (EIRP), a nonprofit organization that promotes the development of advanced energy technologies and practices that will improve the affordability, reliability, safety, and security of American energy supplies and our energy economy. He is also a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI). Previously, Thernstrom served as a senior climate policy advisor at the Clean Air Task Force (CATF); senior policy advisor to the Bipartisan Policy Commission’s Geoengineering Task Force (BPC); resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI); director of communications at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (2001-03); chief speechwriter, U.S. Department of Labor (2001); speechwriter to New York Governor George E. Pataki (1999-2001); and press secretary at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (1996-99). He also assisted Clarence Thomas, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, with the writing of his autobiography, My Grandfather’s Son (HarperCollins, 2007).

Thernstrom’s writing has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The American, The Hill, Bloomberg, and nytimes.com, and he has appeared on ABC News, BBC News, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, NPR, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Thernstrom holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University.