Shalanda H. Baker

Professor Shalanda Baker is on a professional leave of absence to serve in the Biden-Harris Administration as the director of the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Professor Baker is a leading expert on environmental and energy law. In 2018, she co-founded the Initiative for Energy Justice to support the delivery of equity-centered energy policy research and technical assistance to policymakers and frontline communities across the country. She also works closely with colleagues in Northeastern’s Global Resilience Institute, linking it to the School of Law’s Center for Law, Information and Creativity (CLIC). She teaches courses at the law school and in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities related to her research interests and is the author of Revolutionary Power: An Activist’s Field Guide to the Energy Transition (Island Press 2021).

Professor Baker served as an Air Force officer prior to her honorable discharge under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and became a vocal advocate for repeal of the policy. Following her graduation from law school, Professor Baker clerked for Justice Roderick Ireland of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. She also worked as a corporate and project finance associate for Bingham McCutchen, initially in Boston and later in Japan. Professor Baker completed a William H. Hastie Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin Law School, where she received her LLM. In 2016, she was awarded a Fulbright and spent a year in Mexico exploring energy reform, climate change and indigenous rights.

Before joining Northeastern’s faculty, Professor Baker spent three years as an associate professor of law at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai’i, where she was the founding director of the Energy Justice Program. Prior to that, she served on the faculty at University of San Francisco School of Law.