About

Who are the Climate Fellows?

Sixteen young practitioners drawn from multiple career tracks from across Asia, Africa, and Latin America/Caribbean with a common passion to become future leaders in the clean energy/climate change space.

Yale Climate Fellows will model diversity in terms of gender, country origin, and professional background.

Yale Climate Fellows will be drawn from a wide variety of career tracks, including: public servants, industry regulators, entrepreneurs, energy company/utility professionals, bankers/financiers, journalists, educators/researchers, civil society representatives, legislators, legal advisors, and consultants.

Meet the inaugural cohort of Fellows

 

Program Leadership

The program is overseen by Paul Simons, a Jackson Senior Fellow and retired U.S. ambassador who has been actively engaged in global energy and climate change policymaking for more than two decades.

Since 2020, Paul has been teaching and mentoring Yale students in the clean energy transition, while participating actively in the COP 26 process, and leading international teams to investigate the energy transition policies of Japan and Colombia. From 2015 to 2020, he served as Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the leading global authority for energy and climate change analysis and policy development.  At the IEA, Paul led outreach activities with major emerging economies, including developing and implementing the Association process that drew countries including China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, Thailand, Morocco, and Singapore into the IEA family.  Read more