Jennifer Granholm is a former senior research fellow at CITRIS. During her time at CITRIS, she focused on the development of clean energy policy and technology roadmaps through The American Jobs Project.
Granholm served as Michigan’s 47th governor from 2003–11. As governor, she led the state of Michigan through a brutal economic downturn that resulted from a meltdown in the automotive and manufacturing sectors. She worked relentlessly to diversify the state’s economy, strengthen its auto industry, preserve the manufacturing sector, and add new, emerging sectors, such as clean energy, to Michigan’s economic portfolio.
During her tenure, she pioneered clean energy policies, working with business and labor, Republicans and Democrats to create new economic opportunities in Michigan. In 2005, the Granholm economic development team put together an aggressive strategy to make Michigan the hub of clean-energy development in North America by developing entire supply chains in Michigan, fostering critical partnerships between industry, government and researchers and by creating economic incentives that made Michigan the place to locate. Granholm’s plan included specific clustering strategies targeted at battery manufacturing, bio-energy, solar, and wind power. Her leadership attracted to Michigan more than 89,000 clean energy jobs and $9.4 billion in investments in that sector.
After leaving office, Granholm served as an advisor to Pew Charitable Trusts’ Clean Energy Program, where she led a national campaign for clean energy policies. She also hosted Current TV’s political news analysis show “The War Room with Jennifer Granholm” and co-authored “A Governor’s Story: The Fight for Jobs and America’s Economic Future,” which tells how Michigan pioneered ways out of an economic storm and offers proven advice for a nation desperate to create jobs. The book, which she wrote with her husband, Dan Mulhern, became a Washington Post political bestseller shortly after its release.
Granholm is an honors graduate of both the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard Law School. She and her husband have three children.