Amanda Lefton, a Queens native who grew up on Long Island and now lives upstate with her wife, has been tapped as commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
Lefton brings a mix of federal, state, nonprofit and private sector experience to the role. She previously served as director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, where she developed the federal agency’s offshore wind program. Before that she served as the first assistant secretary for energy and environment for New York, where she led the state’s environmental and climate initiatives, and worked as deputy director of policy for The Nature Conservancy in New York. And she most recently was the vice president of offshore development for U.S. East at RWE, an international offshore wind industry company.
