Bernice Lee OBE

Fellow at Chatham House and the Milken Institute

Bernice Lee OBE is a recognised expert on the geopolitics of the energy transition, climate action, and trade. She is a Fellow at Chatham House and the Milken Institute, and Senior Advisor at NatureFinance.

She chairs the Advisory Boards of the Chatham House Sustainability Accelerator and Bellwethers Group, a non-profit she co-founded to mobilise influential networks in support of nature and climate action. She serves on the Board of Chapter Zero Alliance, Unilever’s Sustainability Advisory Council, and the Steering Committee of the Forum on Trade, Environment & the SDGs (TESS).

Previously, she held a range of senior leadership roles at Chatham House, including Director of its Energy, Environment and Resources Department, Director of the Economics and Finance Programme, and Research Director for Futures. She was founding Executive Director of the Hoffmann Centre for Sustainable Resource Economy, and later served as Hoffmann Distinguished Fellow for Sustainability. She also served as Director of Climate Change and Resource Security Initiatives at the World Economic Forum.

Earlier in her career, she held roles at the United Nations Secretary-General’s Office, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Aga Khan Foundation, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

She has also served on advisory bodies including the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Councils on Energy Transition and Climate Change, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation’s Climate Change Advisory Board, Shell’s External Review Committee, Neste’s Sustainability Council, Vale’s CEO Sounding Panel, and the Climate Change Committee’s International Advisory Group.

She holds degrees from the University of Oxford, where she was a Scholar of St Hugh’s College, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2011, she was awarded an OBE for services to climate change cooperation.

Her work has been featured in the Financial Times, New York Times, Wired, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, among others.