Dr. Jennifer Sklarew brings 25 years of energy and environmental policymaking and analysis to her research and teaching. She teaches graduate and undergraduate energy policy and food-energy-water nexus courses she developed for ESP. Her published and funded work examines how institutional relationships and catastrophic events drive energy and environmental policymaking and change. Specific areas of focus include sustainability and resilience challenges in the energy-water nexus, solutions that leverage energywater interdependencies, and energy system transitions in Japan, India, and China. Dr. Sklarew currently leads a project to design, build and deploy hydropower micro-turbines on Mason’s Fairfax campus and analyze technological, ecological, geographical, socio-economic and institutional challenges. Her faculty student team will use this data to develop potential solutions and lessons learned, to which they will add as they conduct additional pilots in overseas communities facing severe energy and water insecurity.

Jennifer’s prior professional experience spans the public and private sectors. She has served as the sector expert for a FEMAfunded project on protection of U.S. electricity infrastructure, and she represented Mason on Arlington County’s Community Energy Plan Implementation Review Committee. Prior to entering academia, Dr. Sklarew served in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Japan, where she led her office’s work on Japanese electricity and gas deregulation, as well as the AsiaPacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. Prior to entering the government, Dr. Sklarew worked as a DC-based energy policy consultant to Japanese utility companies, and as a policy analyst for the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and former rapporteur for the Council’s Energy Security Group, Jennifer received her Ph.D. in public policy from George Mason University, her MA from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and her BA from the University of Pennsylvania.