Alex Matthiessen

Alex Matthiessen is the Hudson River’s most visible and aggressive advocate. With the help of a team of attorneys and the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic, he investigates potential threats to the watershed and enforces environmental law in order to safeguard the Hudson River valley and the New York City drinking water supply. In his capacity as Executive Director, Alex oversees the fundraising and outreach operations of Riverkeeper, Inc., a rapidly growing organization currently comprised of 20 staff.

Alex came to Riverkeeper in 2000 from the U.S. Department of Interior, where he served as Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary on matters of special importance to Secretary Bruce Babbitt. Alex’s primary responsibility was overseeing a government-wide task force to reform the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s hydropower licensing process. While at the Department of the Interior, Alex also conceived and developed the Green Energy Parks initiative, a joint program of the National Parks Service and the Department of Energy, which promotes clean and sustainable energy use throughout the national park system. For his leadership on the project, Alex received a Presidential Award from the White House. Prior to joining the Department of the Interior, he spent a year in Indonesia as a Macroeconomic Policy Analyst for the Harvard Institute for International Development and a summer working at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In a stint as an independent environmental consultant, Alex wrote foundation grants and authored papers on the potential social and environmental impacts of international trade liberalization. Earlier in his career, he served as the Grassroots Program Director for the Rainforest Action Network in San Francisco, organizing and managing an international network of affiliate activist groups.

Alex earned a Masters of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1995 and a Bachelor of Arts, with degrees in Biology and Environmental Studies, from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1988.