Brenda Mallory is the 12th Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). She is the first African American to serve in this position. As Chair, she advises the President on environmental and natural resources policies that improve, preserve, and protect public health and the environment for America’s communities. She is focused particularly on addressing the environmental justice and climate change challenges the nation faces while advancing opportunities for job growth and economic development.

Chair Mallory has decades of experience in both the private and public sector, including spending nearly 20 years at the Environmental Protection Agency and CEQ, serving in a number of senior roles. In Chair Mallory’s first stint at CEQ as the General Counsel, she helped shape many of President Obama’s signature environmental and natural resource policy successes.

Now having returned to CEQ, Chair Mallory is looking to reinvigorate CEQ’s important environmental policy role to advance President Biden’s ambitious climate and environmental justice agenda.

Chair Mallory was the first in her family to attend college, graduating from Yale College with a double major in history and sociology and then from Columbia Law School as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. She and her husband Mark live in Rockville, MD. They have three adult children. The family enjoys visiting the parks and other natural treasures that reflect the environmental values she has worked to protect.