Grayson Shor

Grayson joined Amazon Worldwide Sustainability as a member of The Climate Pledge team in January 2023 as the Senior Lead for Global Partnerships and Communications. Prior to this role, he served as a U.S. diplomat and the Department of State’s lead Climate Security Analyst and primary intelligence briefer to Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry. Grayson was a member of the environmental experts across the federal government who envisioned, informed, and enacted the nation’s international climate initiatives. Grayson has received two prestigious merit awards from the Department of State for his leadership in conceptualizing and coordinating innovative new climate change-focused programs with the interagency, for his substantial contributions of the United States’ first-ever National Intelligence Estimate on climate change, and for effectively representing the United States in negotiations at various United Nations conferences. He has also been the lead author of and a major contributor to multiple technical reports about the circular economy, plastic pollution, renewable energy, climate finance, and human rights abuses in critical minerals supply chains for the President of the United States and his Cabinet. While in government, Grayson has also worked on combating a devastating cholera outbreak in Haiti, implementing transparent international economic policy at the OECD, and advancing the use of new satellite technology to help study and reduce ocean plastic pollution. Grayson is a Mandarin Foreign Language Area Studies fellow, Sigur Center Asian Language grantee, Freeman Foundation grantee, an inaugural George Washington University-U.S. Institute of Peace fellow, and a U.S. Boren Fellow in Taiwan where he served as the American Institute in Taiwan’s first-ever Circular Economy consultant, and was a visiting scholar at the Taiwan Industrial Technology Research Institute. He was also elected to be the Co-Chair of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s largest environmental-focused affinity group. Grayson has served as an expert source for various international reporting organizations and research institutes. He has been quoted in articles by Reuters, the Huffington Post, the Japan Times, The Taipei Times, the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, and the Wilson Center. He has given lectures at Georgetown University, National Taiwan University, University of Washington, and University of Maryland. Grayson is an avid outdoorsman, having professionally led nearly 30 backcountry excursions, and enjoys playing blues guitar. Intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_xwkZZfU9M&feature=youtu.be

Reducing plastic waste

The circular economy