Michel Gelobter

A lifelong environmental advocate, policy analyst, and entrepreneur, Dr. Gelobter has decades of noteworthy achievement in the private, public, government and non-profit sectors. Renowned for his innovative leadership in the climate change, energy, and social justice fields, he was most recently the CEO of Cooler, Inc., and Managing Director of Reflective Earth, a non-profit focused on using albedo to mitigate and to adapt to climate change. He authored Lean Startups for Social Change: The Revolutionary Path to Big Impact in 2016.  

Dr. Gelobter earned his MS & Ph.D. at UC Berkeley’s Energy & Resources Group. His dissertation broke new ground as the first in the field of environmental justice. Subsequently, he founded a number of organizations focused on climate justice, oceans and natural resource protection, as well as power building for marginalized communities across the U.S. Shortly after earning his Ph.D., Dr. Gelobter served as the initial Director of Columbia University’s Program on Environmental Policy in its School of International and Public Affairs.  Gelobter’s government service has included stints as a Congressional Black Caucus Fellow, as staff with the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, as Director of Environmental Quality for the City of New York, and as Senior Advisor to the Administrator of the US E.P.A. 

In 2006, Gelobter helped originate and design the world’s first, economy-wide climate legislation (California’s AB32) and subsequently founded the first consumer-facing climate software company. Dr. Gelobter comes to Yale from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he presently serves as a Board member of CERES, New Energy Nexus, and as co-chair of the Green Leadership Trust.  He is a senior advisor at Google X, an avid backpacker, and, most importantly, the (very proud) father of Marco, Nathan, and Troy.