Environmental Defense Fund Appoints New International Leaders

(New York – February 2, 2022) Environmental Defense Fund today announced the hiring of two global leaders for new positions that will strengthen the nonprofit’s capacities around the world. Headquartered in New York, EDF scientists, economists, attorneys and policy experts work in 28 countries to turn our solutions into action.

Angela Churie Kallhauge will join EDF in April as Executive Vice President for Impact. In this newly created role, she will focus on using inclusive processes and economic approaches to achieve ambitious climate solutions that deliver equitable benefits to people around the world. Churie Kallhauge joins EDF from the World Bank Group where for the past five years she has led the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, a voluntary partnership of governments, businesses, and civil society organizations working to advance carbon pricing on the global agenda. Before joining the World Bank, she spent a decade in senior roles in the Swedish government as a negotiator to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and led the European Union’s team that negotiated adaptation, loss, damage, and capacity development issues. For two years she worked at the International Renewable Energy Agency in Abu Dhabi, where she developed and coordinated an agency-wide strategy on climate change issues. A native Kenyan, Churie Kallhauge is passionate about climate solutions that improve human well-being globally and, in particular, in the developing world. She will be based at EDF’s office in Washington, D.C.

Pete Harrison will join EDF in April as Executive Vice President for Regions, a new role that fosters an impactful and integrated EDF agenda across our four anchor geographies – China, Europe, India and the United States. Based in Brussels, Harrison has been a leader at the European Climate Foundation (ECF) for more than ten years. Since 2018, he has been the ECF’s executive director for EU policy during a period that included preparations for the EU Green Deal, with the goal of making Europe the world’s first climate neutral continent. Prior to that, he spent four years as director of the ECF’s Transport Program, where he deployed strategies that have contributed to Europe’s rapid advances toward phasing out combustion engines and bringing in an era of e-mobility. EDF and ECF have long been allies and look forward to even closer partnership going forward. A former award-winning correspondent at Thomson Reuters, Harrison also serves as vice chair of the Buildings Performance Institute Europe, which is accelerating the transition to zero-carbon buildings. He serves on the sustainability board of aviation biofuels producer SkyNRG.  He is an oceans enthusiast, a surfer and a SCUBA instructor.

Churie Kallhauge and Harrison join an EDF global leadership team that includes regional heads Joe Bonfiglio (U.S), Jill Duggan (Europe,) Hisham Mundol (India) and Zhang Jianyu and Qin Hu (China). 

“Because climate change is a global crisis that demands urgent global solutions, EDF has long worked in countries around the world,” said EDF President Fred Krupp. “With the addition of Angela Churie Kallhauge and Pete Harrison, EDF continues to strengthen our international leadership team as we simultaneously build our strength in the U.S.”

“Having been at the nexus of global climate policy, resilience and adaptation, and economic transitions – especially in the developing world – Angela is the perfect person to serve as EDF’s first-ever head of Impact,” said EDF Executive Director Amanda Leland.  “Pete brings an invaluable combination of humble leadership, systems thinking and actionable results to this new role, in which he will support our regional teams as they collaborate, learn, and drive progress.”

“I am looking forward to joining this team of world class experts,” said Churie Kallhauge, “and to contribute to taking EDF's vision and mission to the global level – to drive action that is informed by science and inclusive of all stakeholders.”

“I am honored to be supporting such a talented team in confronting environmental challenges across four important regions of the world,” said Harrison. “For the past decade in Brussels and across Europe, I have learned the value of focusing intently on enabling key climate solutions for the built environment, and now I’m excited to expand that approach to helping land and ocean ecosystems thrive in the face of climate impacts.”