RAMON J. CRUZ

Ramón Cruz has over 25 years of experience at the intersection of sustainability, environmental policy, urban planning, and climate change at the local, national, and international levels. He is currently a visiting professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in New Jersey. From 2020 to 2023, he served as the president of the Sierra Club, the oldest and largest environmental organization in the United States. As part of that experience, he was heavily involved in the development of President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, the most comprehensive global law to mitigate the effects of climate change. Ramón has experience in the public sector as vice president of the Environmental Quality Board, the regulatory agency for environmental impacts in Puerto Rico, as well as designated Commissioner at the Puerto Rico Energy Commission. Ramón also worked for the San Juan Bay Estuary Program, directed the international policy program at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, was Senior Policy Analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund, and vice president for Energy and Environment for the Partnership for New York City. Ramón was a Senior Fellow at the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute in South Korea, and a consultant for the World Bank, the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), and the Natural Resources Defense Council. His opinion columns on the environment and urbanism have been published in The New York Times, El Nuevo Día, Forbes, The Hill, Buzzfeed, the San Francisco Chronicle, and El Diario, among other publications. Ramón divides his time between his native Puerto Rico and New York City. Ramón holds a bachelor's degree in International Relations and History from American University in Washington D.C., and master's degrees in Public Policy and Urban and Regional Planning from Princeton University in New Jersey. In addition to using a bicycle as a personal transportation method, in his free time, Ramón enjoys hiking, cooking, gardening, and sailing.