Chris is the president of Center for Energy and Environment. He took over the role in March 2016, making him CEE's second leader since it began work as the City of Minneapolis' Energy Office in 1979.

Under Chris’s leadership, CEE has focused its work on rapidly scaling building decarbonization with an emphasis on energy affordability and equitable outcomes. Chris has led a period of remarkable growth at CEE in technology research, community planning, national consulting, program implementation, energy lending, and public policy advocacy with new program areas in market transformation and workforce development. During Chris’s tenure, CEE’s reach has grown nationally, its budget increased 50%, and its staff roughly tripled.

Chris came to CEE from community-focused energy efficiency nonprofit Neighborhood Energy Connection (NEC), based in St. Paul. In addition to overseeing NEC's goal setting, external relations, administration, and finances, he helped expand its program offerings which included residential energy audits, home loans, and the award-winning HOURCAR car-sharing program. The NEC merged with CEE in 2017.

Prior to NEC, Chris was assistant director of the Energy CENTS Coalition, where he had worked previously as an advocate for low-income customers at the Public Utilities Commission and legislature and as an energy efficiency program manager. Before that, he was acting director of the Minnesota Senior Federation, where he coordinated public policy activities and statewide public relations. Chris has a passion for education equity having spent years as a volunteer fundraiser and treasurer of the urban public high school his two kids attended. Chris holds a BA in history from Macalester College in St. Paul and lives with his family in Northeast Minneapolis.