Cassie Phillips

Cassie Phillips leads the Private Environmental Governance Initiative, a new ELI project focusing on the biggest opportunities and most pressing challenges facing the use of voluntary standards, eco-labels, and other market mechanisms to promote environmental stewardship.  Cassie has negotiated a number of complex, multi-stakeholder environmental agreements, implemented through regulatory as well as voluntary means, and is an expert on the law and policy issues associated with voluntary standards.  Prior to joining ELI, Cassie was Vice President of Sustainable Forestry at Weyerhaeuser Company.  Cassie also practiced business and natural resources law at Perkins Coie in Seattle and worked in the U.S. Senate, as legislative assistant to Senator Slade Gorton and as chief counsel of the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space.  She has served in leadership positions in trade associations and environmental organizations, including the board of the Keystone Center, The Nature Conservancy’s business council, the steering committee of The Forests Dialogue, and the Forest Solutions Group of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.  She earned a J.D. in 1982 and a B.S. in Forest Sciences in 1976, both from the University of Washington.