Prior to joining the White House, Hayes was a climate and clean energy advisory on the Biden-Harris Transition Team. He also previously was the co-founder and Executive Director of the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center at the NYU School of Law, where he worked with state attorneys general on climate, environmental and clean energy initiatives.
Hayes previously served as the Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer at the U.S. Department of the Interior for Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and was a partner and Global Chair of the Environment, Land & Resources Department at the international law firm of Latham & Watkins.
Hayes currently is Lecturer in Law at the Stanford Law School and at Stanford University’s Doerr Sustainability School where he teaches, writes and advises on climate and clean energy matters. He is on the Board of the Coalition for Green Capital, is the former Chairman of the Board of the Environmental Law Institute and is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Stanford Law School.
Immediately prior to joining the White House, Hayes was Executive Director of the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center at the NYU School of Law, where he worked with state attorneys general on climate, environmental and clean energy initiatives.
He previously served as Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer at the U.S. Department of the Interior for Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. He was a climate policy advisor for the Biden-Harris Transition in 2020, and led the energy and environmental agency review teams for the Obama-Biden Transition in 2008.
Hayes is a former Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the Stanford Law School; a former Fellow at Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy and Woods Institute for the Environment; and the former Chairman of the Board of the Environmental Law Institute. Hayes is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Stanford Law School.