MICHAEL P. TOTTEN
Senior Director, Climate & Water Initiatives
Center for Environmental Leadership in Business

Education
Yale University: B.A., Literary Analysis (with honors)
University of California, Irvine, Graduate School of Education: Secondary Education Teaching Credential

Michael Totten has nearly 3 decades of professional work in promoting ecologically sustainable economic development at the local, national and international levels. In his current position, Totten focuses on engaging the business sector in opportunities to shrink the ecological footprints of their operations and products, advising them on ways to take action to offset these footprints with positive steps, such as preserving threatened biodiversity habitat.

Previously, Totten served as the Co-Director of the World Resources Institute's Management Institute for Environment and Business. In 1992, he co-founded and served as Executive Director of the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology, which remains one of the world's largest Internet sites on sustainable development. Prior to that, he served as the Senior Director for Information and Training Programs at the International Institute for Energy Conservation, where he promoted energy efficiency market transformation initiatives in developing countries.

Totten co-developed one of the first large-scale energy efficiency projects undertaken by the Global Environment Facility and the World Bank in Mexico, known as Ilumex. In the 1980s, he served as senior environmental advisor to U.S. Congresswoman Claudine Schneider, championing a wide range of environmental and sustainable development policy initiatives, including drafting a 12-title, 250-page Global Warming Prevention Act, which was co-sponsored by one-third of the House of Representative members.