Ranking Member Huffman Announces Natural Resources Staff Director for 119th Congress
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) released the following statement announcing Ana Unruh Cohen will serve as Staff Director in the 119th Congress:
“Natural Resource Democrats could not ask for a more qualified, experienced, and universally respected Staff Director than Ana Unruh Cohen,” said Ranking Member Huffman. “I have trusted and admired Ana’s work for many years – from her time working for the Natural Resources Committee during my first term in Congress, to her leadership at the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, and most recently her role as Senior Director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Her extensive experience both on and off the Hill make her a phenomenal fit for this role. With Ana leading a team of dedicated staff at the Natural Resources Committee, we will be ready on day one to push back against Trump’s ‘drill, baby drill’ agenda and the many dangerous Project 2025 proposals that will soon come before our committee.”
Ana Unruh Cohen has spent the last two decades working on U.S. federal climate and energy policy in Washington, DC. She was most recently Senior Director for NEPA, Clean Energy & Infrastructure for the White House Council on Environmental Quality where she worked to make federal permitting more effective and efficient to help meet President Biden’s climate and clean energy goals.
Prior to that, she served as the majority staff director of the House Select Committee on the Climates Crisis, which released a comprehensive Congressional Climate Action Plan in June 2020 that set the stage for energy and climate provisions in the 2020 omnibus appropriations bill, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPs and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. Of the 715 recommendations in the plan, 314 became law and 438 passed the House of Representatives by the end of 2022.
Prior to joining the Select Committee staff, she was Managing Director of Government Affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the NRDC Action Fund. She served as the Director of Energy, Climate and Natural Resources for Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts) for four years. In the U.S. House of Representatives, she served as the Deputy Staff Director of the Natural Resource Committee Democratic staff from 2011 to July of 2013 and as the Deputy Staff Director and Chief Scientist of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming from 2007 through 2010. Dr. Unruh Cohen was the first Director of Environmental Policy at the Center for American Progress, where she worked from end of 2004 to early 2007. She has also served as a legislative aide to then-Congressman Edward J. Markey, handling various issues pending before the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Unruh Cohen originally joined Congressman Markey’s staff as the 2001-2002 Science and Technology Policy Fellow sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
Dr. Unruh Cohen has a B.S. in chemistry from Trinity University and received her D.Phil. in Earth sciences from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship recipient.