John DeVillars, co-founder and Chair of BlueWave Solar, joined the University of Vermont Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources’ Board of Advisors February 1, 2018. DeVillars is a clean energy and environmental professional with leadership experience in the public and private sectors. BlueWave Solar is a clean energy development and finance company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. 

“We are pleased to welcome John DeVillars to the Rubenstein School Board of Advisors,” said Dean Nancy Mathews. “His national and state level environmental leadership roles and experience in clean energy greatly enhance the Board’s breadth of expertise. We look forward to having him join a very talented board to help us achieve our goal of becoming one of the top schools of the environment in the country.”

DeVillars’ public service career includes posts as Secretary of the Environment for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Chair of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, and Chief of Operations for Governor Michael Dukakis. In 1993, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton as New England Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, a position he served in until 2000. He has received numerous awards for his environmental service, including the President's Award of the Nature Conservancy, given annually for national leadership in environmental affairs. 

His private sector career includes founding and leading the Environmental Management practice for the national accounting firm Coopers and Lybrand; serving as Executive Vice President of Brownfields Recovery Corporation, a brownfields real estate investment and development company with assets in Massachusetts and the U.S. Virgin Islands; and as Lecturer on Environmental Leadership at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For the 2016-2017 academic year, DeVillars served as a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government where he focused on the role of public utilities in meeting the climate change challenge. 

DeVillars sits on numerous private and non‐profit boards of directors including the Executive Committee of the New England Clean Energy Council; the Acadia Center, a leading research and advocacy group on the forefront of efforts to combat global climate change; the Massachusetts Environmental Trust; and EPA’s National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology. 

DeVillars earned his Master in Public Administration degree from Harvard University and his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania.