Michael Wara is a lawyer, scholar and advisor focused on sustainability policy. Wara is Director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program and a senior research scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, where he manages a multidisciplinary team that provides fact-based, bipartisan, technical and legal assistance to policymakers engaged in the development of novel climate and energy law and regulation. Wara is also the Senior Director of Policy within Stanford’s Sustainability Accelerator where he connects Stanford students and faculty with cutting edge policy debates on climate, energy, and sustainability, leveraging Stanford’s analytical expertise to craft real world solutions to these challenges.

Wara was an appointee to the California Wildfire Commission which made recommendations to the state on better managing utility caused wildfires and served on the California Catastrophe Response Council, the oversight board of the Wildfire Fund. Wara has advised the California Senate, the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Office of Electric Infrastructure Safety on strategies to address the wildfire crisis. Wara also serves on the Tamalpais Valley Design Review Board in Marin County.

Prior to joining Woods, Wara was an associate professor at Stanford Law School and an associate in Holland & Knight’s government practice. He received his J.D. from Stanford Law School and his Ph.D. in Ocean Sciences from the University of California at Santa Cruz.