Todd Stern is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a nonresident distinguished fellow at the Asia Society, concentrating on climate change. Stern served during the Obama administration, from January 2009 until April 2016, as the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change and led the U.S. effort in negotiating the Paris Agreement and all climate negotiations in the seven years leading to Paris.
Stern is currently focused on writing, speaking and teaching about climate change. His book Landing the Paris Climate Agreement: How It Happened, Why It Matters, and What Comes Next was published October 8, 2024, by MIT Press. It was named by the Financial Times as one of the four best books of 2024 in the Environment category.
Stern initially started to engage on global climate change in 1997 while serving under President Clinton in the White House as Staff Secretary and helped coordinate the administration’s position during the Kyoto and Buenos Aires negotiations in 1997 and 1998. From 1999 to 2001, Stern served as counselor to Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. In 2016 and again in 2025, Stern taught at Yale Law School as a Visiting Lecturer.
He has written for various publications, including Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Yale Environment 360, The American Interest, and The Washington Quarterly. He has appeared on CNN, the BBC, MSNBC, and NPR, among other outlets. Stern graduated from Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.