Managing Director, Climate; Outrider Foundation

Tia Lee Nelson is an American academic, environmental activist, and politician from the state of Wisconsin. A Democrat, she served as Executive Secretary of the Wisconsin Board of Commissioners of Public Lands. She is the daughter of former United States Senator and governor Gaylord Nelson.

Tia is internationally recognized as a tireless champion for environmental stewardship and climate change education. She spent 17 years with The Nature Conservancy as a policy advisor for Latin America and then, the first director of the Global Climate Change Initiative. For this work, she received the EPA’s Climate Protection Award in 2000.

Tia later returned home to Wisconsin to serve as Executive Secretary to the Wisconsin Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, which included a gubernatorial appointment as co‐chair of Wisconsin’s Task Force on Global Warming.