Kelly Sims Gallagher

Kelly Sims Gallagher is a professor of energy and environmental policy and Dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Gallagher was appointed the dean in 2024, and retains her appointments as director of the Center for International Environment & Resource Policy and the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts. Her research focuses on energy technology and climate policy across the United States and China.

Personal life and education Born in Denver, Colorado, on August 21, 1973, Kelly Megan Sims was raised in Evergreen. During her upbringing she "took a clean and natural environment for granted" until moving to Los Angeles, California to attend Occidental College. There, she suffered from pneumonia due to air pollution, which led her to complete a second major in environmental studies.

Sims married Kevin Paul Gallagher in the Goddard Chapel on June 16, 2001. The couple have two children, born 2005 and 2009.

Career After graduating from Occidental in 1995 with an A.B. degree in diplomacy & world affairs and environmental studies, she was awarded a Truman Scholarship and worked in Washington, D.C. as an intern in the Office of the Vice President and, later, as the science policy director at Ozone Action. She enrolled in the M.A.L.D. program at the Fletcher School, the professional international affairs school of Tufts University. There, she studied East Asia with a focus on economic development and climate negotiation in China and received her degree in 2000. She joined the Harvard Kennedy School as a postdoctoral fellow and worked as a lecturer and program director until joining the Fletcher School as an associate professor in 2009. Gallagher is also a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a board member of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Books