Jennifer Layke

Jennifer Layke is the Global Director, Energy Program at World Resources Institute. Jennifer leads a team of over 40 energy specialists around the world demonstrating approaches to deploying energy efficiency, renewable energy and energy access solutions. Her work has focused on innovative energy procurement paths for corporate and city use of clean energy.

Jennifer co-founded the Building Efficiency Accelerator (BEA), a public private collaboration of over 35 partners supporting 30 cities implementing efficiency policies and projects in support of the Sustainable Energy for All Initiative (SEforALL). Her pioneering U.S. Green Power Market Development Group created in 2000 was an early foundation for nearly two decades of corporate renewable energy procurement efforts. She led WRI’s work on U.S. cap and trade design from 2006-2009 in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.

From 2010-2014, Jennifer created and directed Johnson Controls’ Institute for Building Efficiency, a global initiative to provide information and analyses on the technologies, policies, and practices to deliver high performance buildings.

Jennifer’s international experience includes consulting for the World Bank and the U.S. EPA on technology transfer for ozone layer protection under the Montreal Protocol. In 1990, she was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Foundation fellowship for a year of sociology research in Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan.

She has an A.B. in Asian Studies/Political Studies from Pitzer College in Claremont, CA, and was a student at Nanjing University, China during her undergraduate years. She also has an M.S. and MBA from the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute for Sustainability.