Peter Lehner is the Executive Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). He created and led the environmental prosecution unit for New York City Law Department early in his career. Subsequently, Mr. Lehner began his long association with NRDC, serving for five years as Director of NRDC's water program from 1994 to 1999. He left NRDC to become the Chief of the Environmental Protection Bureau of the New York State Attorney General's Office, a job he held for eight years. In addition to Mr. Lehner's leadership at NRDC, he teaches law at Columbia Law School, and serves on the boards of the Butler Environmental Protection Fund, the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, New York Rivers United, and the Center for Watershed Protection. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, on the advisory council of Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and is one of the founding members of the Environmental Law Reporter and Environmental Law Institute's Advisory Board.