Rishi Reddi

Rishi Reddi is the Director of Environmental Justice for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. Before taking up this post in December 2019, she spent 25 years working as an environmental lawyer at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP), and at the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Region I,  practicing in the areas of regulatory development, enforcement, administrative appeals, and grant development. She co-founded MassDEP’s first Environmental Justice Committee in the mid-1990s and established the agency’s internal language resource bank, which facilitates communication between the agency and Massachusetts residents with limited proficiency in English.

Rishi has worked in a broad array of substantive environmental areas, including Wetlands and Waterways, the Clean Air Act, and RCRA. Most recently, she advised state programs in developing and implementing regulations under the Massachusetts’ Global Warming Solutions Act, helped to develop and implement the Massachusetts grant program resulting from the national Volkswagen Settlement, and was the lead attorney for the Massachusetts’ Low Emission Vehicle Program.

Rishi has served on the Board of Directors of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), a national civil rights organization, and served as the Massachusetts Legislative Coordinator for Amnesty International. She is also the award-winning author of two works of fiction, Passage West: a novel (2020) and Karma and Other Stories (2007).