Roger Martella is a career environmental and climate change lawyer with experience in the federal government, private practice, and in-house.  Roger currently serves as Director and General Counsel for General Electric’s Environment, Health and Safety operations worldwide. At GE, Roger directs policies, operations, and governance for protecting GE’s 200,000+ employees and their neighbors, promotes compliance with environmental, safety, sustainability and climate change requirements, and develops policies and procedures to keep workers and communities safe in the wake of COVID-19. Prior to GE, Roger co-lead Sidley Austin LLP’s global environmental law and climate change practices. Prior to Sidley, Roger was General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Principal Counsel for Complex Litigation for the Justice Department’s Natural Resources Section.

Roger’s passion is to improve environmental protections and rule of law for vulnerable populations around the world by fostering pragmatic, implementable solutions.  To address the impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations, Roger serves as co-chair of the International Bar Association’s Climate Change Justice and Human Rights working group, where he co-authored two reports, including the January 2020 Model Statute for Proceedings Challenging Government Failure to Act on Climate Change.  As vice-chair of the ABA’s environmental rule of law initiative, Roger spearheaded efforts to create the World Justice Project’s first Environmental Rule of Law Index which will be released this spring.  He is co-editor of the upcoming book, Corporate Social Responsibility—Sustainable Business: Environmental, Social and Governance Frameworks for the 21st Century, which Wolters Kluwer will publish in spring 2020.  Roger has chaired several international climate change law conferences focusing on advancing pragmatic legal and technological solutions and corporate accountability.  He is an active board member of the Environmental Law Institute and several environmental NGOs, energy think tanks, and “intrapreneurship” organizations and serves on the executive council of both the International Bar Association’s and ABA’s environmental sections (SEERIL and SEER), where he promoted and helped draft recent presidential-level climate resolutions.