Mark Van Putten

Founder and president of ConservationStrategy© LLC and former CEO of the National Wildlife Federation.

     When Professor Croley called me to ask if I would be interested in participating in the Public Interest/Public Service Faculty Fellows Program, I jumped at the chance. I am a 1982 grad of the Law School and I owe my whole career to this institution. I got involved with the Environmental Law Society as a first-year student and found a supportive group of fellow students who were interested in the same issues as I was. I received funding from SFF for my first job with an environmental group - the West Michigan Environmental Action Council. Most important, I found a mentor in Professor Joe Sax, who then taught Environmental Law. I'm convinced that I received every job I had in my career because of his guidance and because Professor Sax vouched for me at every step of the way.

     After Law School, the National Wildlife Federation hired me to open their Great Lakes regional office based in Ann Arbor. It began as a one-person office and, when I left 14 years later to move to D.C. and become NWF's President & CEO, it had grown to a staff of over 20 and five full-time attorneys. I served as NWF President for nearly eight years during interesting times for the national environmental movement - President Clinton's second term and President George W. Bush's first term. I left NWF to launch my own environmental policy consulting firm, ConservationStrategy, and have an interesting mix of clients, including environmental groups, foundations that fund environmental advocacy and, even, the Federal Highway Administration!

     Although UM Law School equipped me well for my career, I've learned that public interest advocacy involves much more than one's knowledge of the law. It involves knowledge of the public policy process and of politics; it involves coalition building and grassroots organizing; and it involves the use of the media to communicate an organization's goals. Like other social change movements, the environmental movement has gone through several distinct phases in its brief 30-year history. My class will examine public policy advocacy through the lens of the environmental movement. We will look at the development of environmental law and of the environmental movement in the context of other social-change movements and will examine some of the recurring issues involved in integrating science and law in making public policy. While we'll learn some environmental law along the way, the primary focus will be on the role of public interest groups in the formulation of policy with some informed speculation about what the future holds in this regard.

--Quote from speech given at the kick-off reception