Kira Lawrence

Kira is the Director of the UMass Clean Energy Extension starting in 2026. She comes to UMass after 5 years at the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) where she served in the Division of Clean Energy as Senior Scientist, then Acting Deputy Director of Offshore Wind and most recently as Senior Policy Advisor to the President of the BPU. During her time at BPU, she co-developed the New Jersey Research and Monitoring Initiative, served on and then lead the team that developed offshore wind generation and transmission solicitations and managed awarded projects, oversaw the BPU’s Office of Federal and Regional Policy, and worked on policy to support the fossil-to-clean-energy transition in New Jersey. Prior to her work with BPU, Kira was the John H. Markle Professor of Geology at Lafayette College, where she served as co-Chair of the Environmental Science and Studies Programs, Chair of the Department of Geology and Environmental Geosciences, and the faculty lead on Lafayette’s second Climate Action Plan. She holds an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College, Master’s Degrees from University of California Santa Cruz and Brown University, and a PhD from Brown University, all in Earth Sciences.