Linda Sheehan is Executive Director of Planet Pledge, a project of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, where she advances global investment and philanthropic solutions to climate change. Prior to Planet Pledge, she was Executive Director of Earth Law Center, where she advocated for nature’s rights. Ms. Sheehan also ran the California Coastkeeper Alliance and Pacific Region office of Ocean Conservancy, where she successfully advanced federal and state statutes, policies and litigation to: fund and enforce clean water laws, publicize environmental data, curtail sewage and oil spills, establish marine protected areas, address invasive species, restore waterway flows, and create sustainable water supply strategies. For her efforts in “fight[ing] pollution of the Pacific and the streams and rivers that flow into it,” Ms. Sheehan was recognized as a California Coastal Hero by Sunset Magazine and the California Coastal Commission.
Ms. Sheehan holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.P.P. from U.C. Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, and a J.D. from U.C. Berkeley Law School. She is a member of the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law and has been Summer Faculty at Vermont Law School, where she developed and taught Earth Law. She is a contributing author to Law and Policy for a New Economy (Edward Elgar Publishing 2017), Wild Law in Practice (Routledge 2014), Rule of Law for Nature (Cambridge University Press 2013), and Exploring Wild Law: The Philosophy of Earth Jurisprudence (Wakefield Press 2011), with an additional book chapter expected from Cambridge University Press in early 2018.