Laurie Ristino serves as the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative's Co-Executive Director and the Meridian Institute’s General Counsel and Senior Fellow.
Ristino is a policy and law expert on food security, the Farm Bill, climate change, ecosystem services, and land stewardship. Her work is concerned with developing new policy and civil society innovations to address climate change and social injustice while improving environmental and economic sustainability. She has published articles, op-eds, and blog posts proposing reforms to address soil, water, and air quality degradation, among other topics. Laurie has been quoted in top media outlets such as The Hill, Mother Jones, the Christian Science Monitor, E&E News, and Law360.
Laurie served as counsel for two decades at the USDA where she advised on natural resource and environmental matters. After a national search, she was appointed an associate law professor and the inaugural Director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law School. Following Vermont Law, Laurie was a visiting scholar at the George Washington University Law School. She currently teaches environmental policy and global food system sustainability at Johns Hopkins University, and she served as Interim Executive Director at CPR from September to December 2020.
Laurie earned her law degree with distinction from the University of Iowa, a Master in Public Administration from George Mason University, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan.
email
SSRN
