Richard Kauffman

Richard Kauffman is Chair of Generate Capital, a leading financier of clean energy projects.  He serves as Chairman of the New York Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). He is also an Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.  Prior to these roles, he served as New York State’s first “Energy Czar,” where he oversaw the State’s energy agencies, including the Department of Public Service, the New York Power Authority, the Long Island Power Authority, and NYSERDA. Mr. Kauffman served as Senior Advisor to Secretary Steven Chu at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). He was CEO and President of Good Energies, Inc., a leading investor in clean energy technologies; a partner of Goldman Sachs; and Vice Chairman of Morgan Stanley’s Institutional Securities business. Mr. Kauffman served as Chairman of the Board of Levi Strauss & Co. He currently serves on the board of Altaba, the successor company of Yahoo. He currently serves on the boards of the Wallace Foundation; Emergent, a tropical forest finance accelerator; and on the advisory board of the Precourt Energy Institute at Stanford. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and recently served on a study group on innovation in energy. Mr. Kauffman received a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, a master’s degree in international relations from Yale University, and a master’s in public and private management from the Yale School of Management.