EELP Alumni
Sachin Desai ’13
Sachin has dedicated his legal career to supporting the deployment of innovative clean energy solutions to combat our global climate and energy security crises. He is currently the general counsel of Helion Energy, a fast-growing fusion energy company. He helps lead their U.S. and global regulatory efforts and government engagement. Sachin focuses on creating an innovative regulatory path forward for fusion energy as it deploys, as well as negotiating first-of-a-kind transactions around customers and supply chain. Before joining Helion, he worked on nuclear regulatory matters and started his legal career at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and before that clerked at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. While at Harvard Law School he was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Environmental Law Review. Before law school, Sachin was a consultant at Deloitte, a Henry Luce Scholar, and obtained a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Cornell University.
Steven Kerns ’20
Steven dropped out of high school and enlisted in the U.S. Army as an infantry paratrooper to serve his country. After serving in the Army, he found a new mission: combating environmental harm as a scientist and attorney. At HLS he assisted cities in exploring community choice aggregation through the environmental law clinic, did research for EELP, served as a Baron Fellow, and studied water justice in the West Bank as a Cravath Fellow. After graduating, Steven joined the California Department of Justice as an Honors Deputy Attorney General and is now litigating Chevron USA to determine if California can deny fracking permits due to climate change. He has also assisted the California DOJ’s plastic pollution investigation and efforts to increase housing. Uniting his love for science and law, Steven has published ethnobotanical research and now teaches Environmental Law Policy and Ethics to graduate Sustainability Management and Policy students at California State University Long Beach.
Chloe Kolman ’11
Chloe is a senior attorney for litigation policy and strategy in the environmental defense section of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). She graduated magna cum laude from Yale University before attending Harvard Law School, where she was the Environmental Law Program Fellow. After law school, she served as a Public Interest Law Fellow at the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C. then joined the Department of Justice as part of the Attorney General’s Honors Program. After more than 10 years at DOJ, Chloe has become the department’s primary advocate handling the review and defense of EPA’s greenhouse gas rulemakings under the Clean Air Act, including rules establishing greenhouse gas standards for vehicles, power plants, the oil and gas industry, and aircraft. Although she litigates primarily in the D.C. Circuit, she has also helped defend EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations before the Supreme Court, including in West Virginia v. EPA. Chloe is also the department’s lead attorney for the defense of EPA’s Good Neighbor Plan addressing the interstate transport of ozone pollution, where she has successfully defended multiple challenges to EPA’s cross-state air pollution rules before the D.C. Circuit.
Matt Littleton HLS ’10/HKS ’10
As deputy assistant attorney general of the Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. Department of Justice, Matt oversees the division’s work in the courts of appeals, its defense of federal agencies’ pollution-control programs, and its enforcement of Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. He was also a partner at Donahue & Goldberg, LLP, representing nonprofits and municipalities in complex appeals and other administrative law cases. At HLS, Matt took multiple environmental law courses, was a senior editor of the Harvard Environmental Law Review, and provided research assistance to Professors Jody Freeman, Richard Lazarus, and Robert Stavins. Through the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, Matt externed at the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Conservation Law Foundation, and he worked at the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change as part of the HLS Semester in Washington Clinic.
James Pollack ’20
James graduated from Harvard Law School in 2020 and was active in the environmental law community. He served as co-editor-in-chief of the Harvard Environmental Law Review, worked as a research assistant at the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program, participated in the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, and received a T.A. Barron Fellowship for summer work at the National Resource Defense Council. James is currently an associate at Marten Law, a national environmental law firm, where he leads the firm’s consumer products regulatory practice. James counsels textile and apparel manufacturers, outdoor recreational product manufacturers, food product manufacturers, and retailers on various sustainability issues. James credits the incredible environmental law opportunities at Harvard for supporting his early career.
Cecilia Segal ’15
Cecilia Segal is a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), where she litigates federal, state, and administrative cases on matters ranging from unlawful approvals of fossil fuel infrastructure to remediation of lead-contaminated drinking water. Segal joined NRDC in 2017 as an HLS Beagle Fellow. Before that, she clerked for Judge Christopher F. Droney on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. At Harvard Law School she was deeply involved with the Environmental & Energy Law Program, the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, and the Environmental Law Review.
Grace Weatherall ’21
Grace went to law school to pursue a career in climate change and took advantage of all the climate and environment-focused programming she could while at Harvard. She worked for EELP as a research assistant for three years, was a managing editor of the Harvard Environmental Law Review (HELR), and was a member of the Harvard Environmental Law Society’s leadership team. Grace also worked as a research assistant for Professor Jody Freeman, a teaching fellow for Professor Richard Lazarus, and received a T.A. Barron Fellowship. She interned with the DOJ ENRD Appellate Section in Washington D.C. through the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. After graduating from HLS, Grace worked as a legal fellow and then as a staff attorney, for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), focusing on policy and litigation regarding oil and gas and power plant greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations. Since January 2023, Grace has worked as an attorney advisor in the EPA Office of General Counsel’s Air and Radiation Law Office (ARLO).