Tripti Joshi (Editor)

Sherri W Goodman

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Name
  
Sherri Goodman


Ex-spouse
  
John Benjamin Goodman

Children
  
Matthew Goodman, Robert Goodman, Natalie Goodman

Parents
  
George Wasserman, Renate Wasserman

Sherri W. Goodman (born April 9, 1959) is an executive, policymaker, and lawyer with focus on science, technology, national security, energy, and environment. Goodman currently serves a Senior Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center and at CNA. She is affiliated with the Environmental Change and Security Program, the Polar Initiative, and the Global Women's Leadership Initiative at the Wilson Center. She served as President & Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, a Washington, D.C. based science research organization that represents the leading public and private ocean research education institutions, aquaria and industry.

Contents

Goodman served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary of CNA, an American research organization providing research, analyses, and policy recommendations for national security and public sector leaders. CNA conducts operations research and systems analysis for a wide variety of national security and other organizations. She was the Executive Director of CNA’s Military Advisory Board, which she founded in 2006, and which is noteworthy for issuing some of the earliest reports establishing climate change as a national security concern. The CNA Military Advisory Board has characterized climate change as a “threat multiplier” for instability in fragile regions of the world.

Public service

Prior to joining the CNA in 2001, Goodman served as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security, from 1993-2001. As the Pentagon’s chief environmental, safety, and occupational health officer, Goodman was one of the highest-ranking women to serve in the United States Department of Defense. She was responsible for more than $5 billion in annual defense investments, providing policy, program, and budget guidance for thousands of environmental, safety, and occupational health professionals in the Department of Defense. She developed policies and programs for energy efficiency and climate change, compliance with environmental laws, environmental cooperation with foreign militaries, environmental restoration of active and closing bases, and conservation of natural and cultural resources on more than 25 million acres of public lands. Additionally, Goodman managed President Bill Clinton’s plan for revitalizing base closure communities, ensuring that 80% of base closure property became available for transfer and reuse.

Goodman has twice received the Department of Defense medal for Distinguished Public Service, in addition to the Gold Medal from the National Defense Industrial Association, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Change Award.

From 1987-90, Goodman served on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee, working for Committee Chairman Senator Sam Nunn. Her responsibilities included oversight of the United States Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons research, development, production and environmental remediation, as well as ratification of nuclear arms control treaties.

Personal

Prior to her public service, Goodman practiced law at Goodwin Procter and worked as a defense analyst at RAND and SAIC.

She received her Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from Amherst College, after which she earned a J.D. cum laude from the Harvard Law School and a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Born Sherri Lynn Wasserman, she married John Benjamin Goodman in 1987. She is the daughter of George and Renate Wasserman, both childhood refugees of the Holocaust in the prelude to World War II. John Goodman is Chief Operating Officer of Accenture Federal, a global management consulting, technology service, and outsourcing company.

Affiliations

Goodman serves on the boards of the Atlantic Council, the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative Leadership Council, the Marshall Legacy Institute, the State Department International Security Advisory Board, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and the US Water Partnership. She has served as a Trustee of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the Committee on Conscience of the U.S. Holocaust Museum.

She is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Advisory Board of its Center for Preventive Action. Goodman has been an adjunct lecturer in international affairs and security at the Kennedy School of Government, and an adjunct research fellow at the Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government.

In 2010, Goodman served on the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel co-chaired by former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry.

Publications

At the CNA Military Advisory Board, Goodman has produced five major reports establishing the links between U.S. energy policy, climate change and national security: "National Security and the Threat of Climate Change" (2007), "Powering America’s Defense: Energy & the Risks to National Security" (2009), "Powering America’s Economy: Energy Innovation at the Crossroads of National Security Challenges" (2010), and "Ensuring America’s Freedom of Movement: A National Security Imperative to Reduce US Oil Dependence" (2011), "National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change" (2014), and "Advanced Energy and US National Security" (2017).


Ms. Goodman has testified before numerous committees of the U.S. Congress, and conducted interviews with print, television, radio, and online media. She has published widely in various print and online media and in legal and scholarly journals.

References

Sherri W. Goodman Wikipedia