Rees Sweeney-Taylor

Rees is a second-year Master in Public Policy candidate at Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to attending Harvard, he directed the Berkeley Shambhala Meditation Center, which offers mindfulness and compassion training programs with the goal of building community dedicated to creating a good human society. While at HKS, Rees is studying public and private solutions to climate change and the energy transition. His master’s project focuses on implementation of New York City’s Local Law 97.

In addition to his coursework, Rees has worked across sectors, providing research to a variety of organizations fostering the energy transition. Through a Rappaport Public Policy Fellowship, he developed a carbon pricing model for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs as they designed the Commonwealth’s 2050 Decarbonization Roadmap. He also provided a comparative analysis of regulatory approaches to microgrids for the Department of Public Utilities. As an Energy Resilience Research Fellow for Converge Strategies, he assessed state energy policy and federal emergency management funding to support clean, resilient energy initiatives. He is currently conducting research on applications for long-duration energy storage for Form Energy.

Rees received a BA in Russian Language and Literature from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was awarded the Morehead-Cain Scholarship.