Cameron Davis
Chairman
Cameron Davis was elected to the MWRD Board of Commissioners in November 2018. He is a vice president at GEI Consultants, Inc. Before joining GEI, he was appointed by the Obama Administration to coordinate the work of 11 federal departments and serve as liaison to Congress on Great Lakes matters. As Senior Advisor to two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrators in Washington, D.C., his responsibilities included coordinating Great Lakes policy and more than $2 billion in investments to state, municipal, tribal, business and civic stakeholders for contaminated sediment cleanups, invasive species prevention, habitat restoration, runoff reduction, and related water resource matters.
For more than three decades, Commissioner Davis has worked to develop and implement water quality and quantity policy. He helped draft legislation that authorized the bipartisan Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and Great Lakes Legacy Act, which leverage public-private partnerships for cleanups. He also helped draft, and testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to pass, the Great Lakes Water Resources Compact, precedent-setting water conservation standards for the U.S. and Canada.
Prior to federal service, Commissioner Davis taught at the University of Michigan Law School, was a litigating attorney at the National Wildlife Federation, and CEO of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, headquartered in Chicago. Under his leadership, the organization established the Adopt-a-Beach® program and won the American Bar Association’s Distinguished Award in Environmental Law & Policy, the first time for a public interest organization in the honor’s history.
Commissioner Davis worked full time while putting himself through Chicago-Kent College of Law’s night school program, earning his J.D. and Certificate in Environmental & Energy Law. He has a B.A. from Boston University and graduated from New Trier High School. He is an author (Confluence: Genoir® of An American Family, The Better Part of Valor), genealogist, and fly fisherman. He is married to Dr. Katelyn Varhely, a child psychologist. They have two children.