Melanie Nakagawa is Head of Climate Initiative with Princeville Global, an investment firm backing rapidly-growing technology-enabled companies around the world. She leads their effort to invest in global companies delivering transformative solutions to climate change with strong investor returns. Before Princeville Global, Ms. Nakagawa served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Transformation at the U.S. State Department leading efforts to support countries implementing clean energy commitments and adopt low carbon technologies. She served on the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s Policy Planning Staff as a strategic advisor to the Secretary spearheading efforts to elevate climate change as a foreign policy priority and reach a global climate agreement in 2015. Ms. Nakagawa has served as the Senior Energy/Environment Counsel for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, and is a non-resident Fellow with Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. She earned a J.D. from American University’s Washington College of Law, M.A. in International Affairs from American University’s School of International Service, and A.B. from Brown University.
