About EPA
Susan Hedman, Administrator for EPA's Region 5 Office in Chicago
Susan Hedman
- Phone: 312-886-3000
- Email: hedman.susan@epa.gov
- About the Region 5 Office
- About the Great Lakes National Program Office
Susan Hedman was appointed by President Barack Obama to be EPA Region 5 Administrator on Earth Day 2010. She directs EPA’s operations in the six-state Great Lakes region, which includes Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, as well as 35 federally recognized tribal governments. One of her most important roles is that of Manager of the Great Lakes National Program Office, which oversees restoration and protection of the largest freshwater system in the world. Millions of people depend upon the Great Lakes for drinking water and millions more recreate in and around the Great Lakes.
Prior to accepting the President’s appointment, Dr. Hedman was environmental counsel and senior assistant attorney general in the Illinois Attorney General’s office, where she focused on litigation and legislation relating to environmental protection, energy efficiency, renewable energy, carbon capture technology and associated consumer issues.
Dr. Hedman has over 30 years of experience in the environmental protection field. In the early 1980s she was on the faculty of Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, where she taught courses in environmental policy. Dr. Hedman then joined the faculty at the University of Maryland, where she taught environmental policy and law courses, supervised cases in the Environmental Law Clinic, and served as research director for the Center for Global Change.
In 1993, she moved to Chicago and began working for the Environmental Law and Policy Center, where she served as lead counsel for citizen groups involved in environmental cases throughout the Midwest. In 2000, she moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where she was in charge of the legal team for the United Nations tribunal that handled claims for environmental damage from the oil fires in Kuwait and releases of oil in the Persian Gulf, as well as the costs of de-mining and disposal of unexploded ordnance.