Graham Family Director

Graham Sustainability Institute

Jennifer Haverkamp, the Graham Family Director of the Graham Sustainability Institute, is an internationally recognized expert on climate change, international trade, and global environmental policy and negotiations.

As director, she is charged with facilitating sustainability-focused collaborations between faculty and students from many disciplines across campus with external stakeholders including communities, non-governmental organizations, government agencies, foundations, professional organizations, and the private sector. Under her leadership, the Graham Sustainability Institute works to bring together the world-class expertise of U-M faculty and students with the knowledge and needs of these off-campus partners to solve sustainability challenges on all scales, from the local to the global.

Haverkamp is also a Professor from Practice at Michigan Law School, teaching courses on international environmental law and trade and sustainability law, and a Professor of Practice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. From 2019 to 2021 she served as co-chair of the U-M President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality, whose key recommendations for a timeline and pathway for achieving carbon neutrality across all three campuses have been adopted by the Regents and the President.

Before joining U-M in October 2018, Haverkamp served as visiting professor of practice and distinguished practitioner in residence at Cornell Law School, as well as executive in residence at the David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, also at Cornell University.

Prior to that, she served as special representative for environment and water resources, with personal rank of ambassador, in the U.S. Department of State. In 2016, she led U.S. climate negotiators to a successful international agreement under the Montreal Protocol to decrease global use of hydrofluorocarbons, a potent greenhouse gas. She also facilitated a successful agreement by the International Civil Aviation Organization to adopt the first-ever global market-based measure to address aviation carbon emissions. In this role, Haverkamp also oversaw diplomatic engagement in transboundary water management, water conflicts and global water governance.

Besides her time in the State Department, Haverkamp led the international climate program at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Environment and Natural Resources, and held positions in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.

She has been a lecturer teaching international trade and sustainable development law at George Washington University and teaching environmental law and policy at Johns Hopkins University.

Haverkamp earned a law degree from Yale Law School, was a Rhodes Scholar earning a master’s degree in politics and philosophy at Oxford University and majored in biology at The College of Wooster (on whose board of trustees she has served for many years). She also has served on numerous nonprofit boards and advisory councils, including the boards of the Verified Carbon Standard Association and the American Bird Conservancy as well as on USTR’s Trade and Environment Policy Advisory Committee.