Jay Gulledge was a fellow in New America's Resource Security program. He is an independent scholar and scientific consultant focusing on environmental risks, such as land degradation, climate change, and extreme weather, as they relate to environmental policy, food, energy, and natural resource security, and international security and foreign policy. For the past 15 years he has helped business and government decisionmakers translate scientific information into actionable strategies for managing security risks associated with climate change and environmental degradation. He advocates for a risk-management framework in which properly characterized scientific uncertainties are used as actionable information rather than a cause of decision paralysis. In 2011 he received the American Geophysical Union's Charles S. Falkenberg Award for “contribut[ing] to the quality of life, economic opportunities, and stewardship of the planet through the use of Earth science information and to the public awareness of the importance of understanding our planet.”
Dr. Gulledge holds adjunct faculty appointments in the Institute of Agriculture and the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education at the University of Tennessee. Previously, he was Director of the Environmental Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Chief Scientist for the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, and Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Earlier in his career he held faculty positions at Tulane University and University of Louisville, where he taught and conducted original research in microbial ecology, biogeochemistry, and global environmental change. He earned his Ph.D. degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and was a Life Sciences Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University.