Members of the Advisory Board

Thomas McHenry served as Dean and President of Vermont Law School from 2017 to 2021 where he directed a variety of initiatives to make the school financially stronger and enhance its educational programs.  Tom previously worked as an attorney in Los Angeles for thirty years, the last twenty as a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher where he practiced general environmental law.  Tom also served as an Adjunct Professor at Claremont McKenna College from 1992 to 2017 where he taught environmental law and policy and environmental leadership. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Lawrence Karlton, Chief United States District Judge of the Eastern District of California, in Sacramento in 1984-86 and as a research fellow in the National Park Department of Taiwan in 1983-1984. Tom continues to teach environmental classes at Claremont McKenna and Pomona Colleges.  He currently serves as the chair of the Leadership Council at the Yale School of the Environment, as vice-chair of the Advisory Council for the Roberts Environmental Center at Claremont McKenna College, as chair of the Conservation Committee of the National Forest Foundation, as chair of the finance committee on the board of the Open Space Institute and on the board of the Center for Large Landscape Conservation in Bozeman, Montana. He is researching and drafting a book on environmental leadership, a chapter on forest law in the United States and consulting to several environmental organizations. Tom graduated from New York University Law School in 1983 where he served on the Journal of International Law and Politics. He received a Master of Forest Science Degree from the Yale School of the Environment (formerly the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies) in 1980 and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Yale College in 1977.