Hunter Lovins

Education and career

Lovins received an undergraduate degree in sociology and political science from Pitzer College in 1972, and a J.D. from Loyola Law School in 1975.

A practicing attorney (member of the State Bar of California), Lovins helped establish the urban forestry and environmental education group California Conservation Project (Tree People), and was their assistant director for about six years. She served as policy adviser for Friends of the Earth under David Brower.

In 1982, Hunter Lovins and Amory Lovins co-founded Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colorado. They initially ran the research foundation out of their home and referred to it as a "think-and-do-tank". Hunter Lovins served as RMI's CEO for strategy until 2002.

Lovins has taught at several universities including Dartmouth College, where she was a Henry R. Luce visiting professor, and the Bainbridge Graduate Institute's Pinchot University, which became Presidio Graduate School in 2016.

In 2013, Hunter served as a mentor for Unreasonable at Sea, a technology business accelerator for social entrepreneurs seeking to scale their ventures in international markets, founded by Unreasonable Group, Semester at Sea, and Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design.

Lovins is a founding professor of the MBA in sustainability at Bard College, where she serves as a faculty member.

Lovins has addressed major gatherings such as the World Economic Forum, the United States Congress, and the World Summit on Sustainable Development. She has also done consulting for citizens’ groups, governments, and corporations.

Lovins is credited with coining the phrase global weirding—a play on the term global warming—in the early 2000s. The phrase describes weather phenomena that had not previously been seen.