David J. Hayes is a Special Assistant to the President for Climate Policy. He is a senior member of National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy’s White House team, which is advancing the Biden administration’s climate, conservation, and clean energy priorities. Immediately prior to joining the White House, Hayes was Executive Director of the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center at the NYU School of Law, where he worked with state attorneys general on climate, environmental and clean energy initiatives. He previously served as Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer at the U.S. Department of the Interior for Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. He was a climate policy advisor for the Biden-Harris Transition in 2020, and led the energy and environmental agency review teams for the Obama-Biden Transition in 2008. Hayes is a former Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the Stanford Law School; a former Fellow at Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy and Woods Institute for the Environment; and the former Chairman of the Board of the Environmental Law Institute. Hayes is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Stanford Law School.