Kurt Shickman

Global Cool Cities Alliance
Executive Director
Kurt Shickman Image

Kurt is the Executive Director of the Global Cool Cities Alliance (GCCA). GCCA is a non-profit dedicated to helping cities reduce urban heat to improve heat resilience, through the use of passive cooling solutions such as highly solar reflective surfaces. GCCA has led projects for the Clean Energy Ministerial, U.S. Department of Energy, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the World Bank. GCCA is the lead technical partner for the Million Cool Roofs Challenge – an initiative to rapidly establish markets for cool surfaces in countries facing an acute lack of access to cooling. Prior to launching GCCA, Kurt was the Director of Research for the Energy Future Coalition and the United Nations Foundation’s Energy and Climate team. His work involved building broad and diverse coalitions of stakeholders around key clean energy and climate change policies at the local, state, and federal level with a particular emphasis on dramatically scaling up the deployment of energy efficiency in existing residential and commercial buildings. Kurt received his Masters degree with a focus on Energy Policy and Economics in 2007 from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He has also worked in management consulting and corporate finance for several multinational firms including Royal Ahold, MCI Worldcom, and Federal Realty Investment Trust.