Rachel Jacobson

Rachel Jacobson is a distinguished fellow at the Adrienne Arsht National Security Resilience Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and the Global Energy Center at the Atlantic Council. She is currently a senior advisor with The Roosevelt Group and a senior expert advisor to Northwestern University’s Energy Innovation Lab.

She previously served as the assistant secretary of the US Army for installations, energy, and environment and as the Army’s chief sustainability officer. In that role, she managed a $20 billion budget focused on mission readiness through resilient, sustainable, energy-secure installations and collaboration with diverse public and private stakeholders. Under her leadership, the Army established the first ever Advanced Nuclear Power Initiative for installations and launched several geothermal exploration projects.

Earlier in her career, Jacobson was in private practice at the law firm WilmerHale. She served as the acting assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks and the principal deputy solicitor at the US Department of the Interior, where she played a leading role in permitting large-scale renewable energy projects on public lands, both onshore and offshore, and oversaw restoration efforts following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. She was also a lawyer in the US Department of Justice and handled some of the largest environmental cases in US history, including major oil spills.