Office of Science and Technology Policy

Council Member: John Holdren, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy

Council Designee: Shere Abbott, Associate Director for Environment, Office of Science and Technology Policy

Sherburne “Shere” B. Abbott is the Associate Director for Environment of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President. Prior to holding this position, Ms. Abbott was a faculty member of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin and served as the Director of the Center for Science and Practice of Sustainability in the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost.

Previously, Ms. Abbott served as Chief International Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest general science organization in the world, where she was responsible for the International Office, and where she established and directed the Center for Science, Innovation and Sustainable Development. Prior to this appointment, Ms. Abbott consulted on environmental science and sustainable development for private foundations, the World Bank, the Brookings Institution, and other non-governmental organizations.

Until 2001, Ms. Abbott worked at the National Academies’ National Research Council over a 17-year period, serving in several capacities -- Executive Director of the Board on Sustainable Development, where she directed the Sustainability Transition Study and the Global Change Research Program; Director of International Organization Programs for the Office of International Affairs; and Director of the Polar Research Board. Ms. Abbott also served as Assistant Scientific Program Director of the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission, an independent federal agency, where she managed the research program and developed a model of environmental research for monitoring human impacts in Antarctica.            

Ms. Abbott earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from Goucher College and her master’s degree in environmental science and natural resource policy from Yale University, where she was a Dodge Fellow in Human – Animal Ecology.