Sherri Goodman

Summary

Sherri Goodman, Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and Polar Institute, and Secretary General of the International Military Council on Climate & Security, is credited with educating a generation of US military and government officials about the nexus between climate change and national security, using her famous coinage, “threat multiplier,” to fundamentally reshape the national discourse on the topic. Sherri serves as Vice Chair of the Secretary of State's International Security Advisory Board and on the EXIM Bank's Council on Climate. A former first Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (Environmental Security) and staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Goodman has founded, led, or advised nearly a dozen research organizations on environmental and energy matters, national security, and public policy.

Full Bio

Sherri Goodman is an experienced leader and senior executive, lawyer and director in the fields of national security, climate change, energy, science, oceans and environment. Goodman is Secretary General of the International Military Council on Climate & Security, the global forum for military leaders and security professionals dedicated to addressing the security risks of a changing climate. She is a Senior Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, and Senior Strategist at the Center for Climate and Security. Previously, she served as the President and CEO of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership.

Goodman served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of CNA (Center for Naval Analyses) where she was also the founder and Executive Director of the CNA Military Advisory Board, whose landmark reports include National Security and the Threat of Climate Change (2007), and National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change (2014), Advanced Energy and US National Security (2017), and The Role of Water Stress in Instability and Conflict (2017) among others. The film The Age of Consequences in which Goodman is featured, is based on the work of the CNA Military Advisory Board.

Goodman served as the first Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (Environmental Security) from 1993-2001. As the chief environmental, safety, and occupational health officer for the Department of Defense (DoD), she oversaw an annual budget of over $5 billion. She established the first environmental, safety and health performance metrics for the Department and, as the nation’s largest energy user, led its energy, environmental and natural resource conservation programs. Overseeing the President’s plan for revitalizing base closure communities, she ensured that 80% of base closure property became available for transfer and reuse. Ms. Goodman has twice received the DoD medal for Distinguished Public Service, the Gold Medal from the National Defense Industrial Association, and the EPA’s Climate Change Award.

Goodman has served on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee for Committee Chairman Senator Sam Nunn. She has practiced law at Goodwin Procter, as both a litigator and environmental attorney, and has worked at RAND and SAIC.

Goodman serves on the boards of the Atlantic Council, the Council on Strategic Risks, the EXIM Bank Council on Climate, the Joint Ocean Commission Leadership Council, the Marshall Legacy Institute, the National Academies Advisory Committee of the US Global Change Research Program, Sandia National Labs’ Energy & Homeland Security External Advisory Board, the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, served on its Arctic Task Force and chaired the Advisory Committee on Governing Solar Geo-Engineering.

Sherri has testified before numerous committees of the US Congress, and conducted interviews with print, television, podcast, radio and online media. She has published widely in various print and on-line media and in legal and scholarly journals.  She is a frequent presenter and lecturer to governments, private and public sector organizations, and academia. In recent years she has spoken at Harvard Kennedy School, MIT, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Middlebury College, Virginia Tech, Georgetown University, the Army War College, and National Defense University. She has been an Adjunct Lecturer in International Affairs and Security at the Harvard Kennedy School and an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Kennedy School’s Center for Science and International Affairs.

A summa cum laude graduate of Amherst College, she earned a law degree from Harvard Law School and a masters’ in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Amherst College in 2018. 

She received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Environmental Peacebuilding Association in the Hague in 2024.

Her new book, Threat Multiplier:  Climate Change, the Military and Global Security was published in August 2024.  

Headshot taken by Kristina Sherk .