Carlos Martín joins Resources for the Future as the new vice president for research and policy engagement. Get to know him a little better through this Q&A that covers his reasons for joining the org and his plans for the future.
Stepping into the position of vice president for research and policy engagement at the start of this year, Carlos Martín joins Resources for the Future (RFF) as a welcome addition. We know Carlos well around RFF, as he’s collaborated with RFF scholars for many years and participates regularly in RFF events. He grew his relationship with RFF by joining as a university fellow in 2023; his new role as an RFF vice president clinches his place at the organization.
Carlos has led research and policy engagement in the fields of climate mitigation and adaptation and disaster mitigation and recovery for more than 25 years. His work is well-known on decarbonization, adaptation, and environmental justice related to housing and building development policy. He comes to RFF most recently from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, where he remains affiliated. Prior to that, he was a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, David Rubenstein Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and an assistant staff vice president at the National Association of Home Builders. He’s also held positions at Arizona State University and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Read on to get to know Carlos a little better and his reasons for joining RFF, how he thinks RFF work relates to this moment in history, and his vision for RFF research and policy engagement moving forward.
Resources magazine: How do you see this moment in history as unique for the work that RFF is doing?
Carlos Martín: We’re in an existentially critical moment in environmental policy and scholarship in our country. The courts are calling decades-old laws into question, while federal and state governments are rolling out their biggest investments in history for energy and climate. Environmental policy writ large—but especially global climate change—is a top national priority, if not the top policy, given the way it will shape so much of our economy and social prosperity for years to come. The case for rigorous evidence has never been stronger.
Why is RFF the right place for you at this point in your career and for your vision of the work that RFF will do in this critical moment?
Amid all the shifts in environmental policy occurring right now, the breadth of research topics, research methods, and researcher diversity has expanded. RFF was founded on the principle that you cannot develop sound environmental policy without considering economic and societal conditions and outcomes. Let’s apply that analogy to the environmental research community: we need to reflect the demographic shifts that are occurring in our country and in professional workplaces. Along with continuing RFF’s tradition of rigor and policy relevance, my vision for RFF is to smooth that professional transition. It’s one I know will lead to amazing research insights, too.
What kinds of things have drawn you toward working in think tanks? Can you speak to your experience and fascination with the history of think tanks, particularly in the context of Washington, DC?
We work in a privileged space. We get to do cutting-edge research and communicate it to the very people who make decisions about the things we study and communities that are affected by those decisions. That level of relevance makes our work exciting—and it means that the stakes for accuracy, rigor, and review are that much higher. I’ve quietly documented the history of the think-tank space as I’ve navigated my own career through it, so I’ve been able to compare institutions and how they deal with changes in the political and social landscapes. For example, RFF arose in what I call the “second wave” of DC think tanks coming out of the 1960s—one of the most prolific eras for environmental policy and civil rights legislation. That moment says as much about the role we must play now as it does about RFF’s institutional legacy.
Get to Know Carlos
How did you get into the type of work that you do? What drives your passion for environmental issues?
My parents grew up on subsistence farms in Mexico with no electricity or running water. I spent summers there in my early childhood, developing a deep respect for the land and a profound sense of how the environment defined the financial and health outcomes of my family and the cohesion of our community. When I was born, my parents also unknowingly (and fortunately) moved my family out of the emissions plume of one of the most hazardous pollution sites in California. My family took seriously their role as occupants of the land they inhabited, so what drives me is ensuring that information and knowledge are uncovered, preserved, and shared to turn occupants into stewards.
What makes you excited to join RFF in this new capacity?
What doesn’t excite me?! It’s an amazing time to be working in our field, and RFF always has been a foundational institution in it. But RFF also has proven itself willing and able to change. RFF is fortunate to have an amazing team, including a crack team of researchers, research communicators, policy engagers, and project managers with whom I have worked or whom I’ve admired for decades. RFF is the right institution for this moment. I’m grateful and humbled to be part of it.
A version of this article appeared in print in the Winter 2025 issue of Resources magazine.
