James Levitt '80
Director
Program on Conservation Innovation at the Harvard Forest, Harvard University

← Back

James Levitt is director of the Program on Conservation Innovation at the Harvard Forest, Harvard University, and a research fellow at the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He also provides management consulting services to public, private, and non-profit organizations as president of Levitt & Company, Inc. His focus is present- day and historic innovations in the practice of land and biodiversity conservation, with particular emphasis on innovation in conservation finance.

Levitt leads the annual Conservation Leadership Dialogue sponsored by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy and is the editor of From Walden to Wall Street: Frontiers of Conservation Finance, as well as Conservation in the Internet Age: Threats and Opportunities. He has written and lectured extensively in the United States and internationally on conservation innovation in the twenty-first century. He has served on the advisory board of the Long-Term Ecological Research Program sponsored by the National Science Foundation, and is an officer on the board of several conservation non-profits, including the Massachusetts Audubon Society and the QLF/Atlantic Center for the Environment.

Levitt is a graduate of Yale College and the Yale School of Management.