Overcoming Today’s Friction to Unlock Tomorrow’s Opportunities

Kerry C. Duggan is a nationally recognized policy leader, strategist, corporate board director, and founder with over two decades of experience working at the intersection of environmental stewardship, energy security, and economic development. She is widely known for translating complex policy into execution and breaking silos that prevent markets and governments from acting at speed.

In 2017, Duggan founded Energy Security Partners (ESP.earth), a global strategic advisory firm counseling CEOs, boards, and public-sector leaders in high-stakes environments. ESP specializes in pragmatic, place-based community engagement strategies that reduce risk, enhance resilience, and move complex systems from alignment to delivery.

Duggan’s career is anchored by service at the highest levels of the U.S. government. At the White House, she served as Deputy Director for Policy to then-Vice President Joe Biden and as Deputy Director of the Detroit Federal Working Group. Her coordination of over 20 federal agencies during Detroit’s financial crisis demonstrated that execution at scale is possible even under extreme constraints and low public trust.

At the U.S. Department of Energy, she held senior roles including Director of Legislative, Regulatory & Urban Affairs; Liaison to the City of Detroit; and Stakeholder Engagement Director. She later served on the Biden-Harris Transition Team and the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board under Secretary Granholm.

Beyond government, Duggan was a Partner at the firm of Hon. Tom Ridge. She currently serves on the corporate boards of Perma-Fix (NASDAQ: PESI) and BlueGreen Water Technologies, and on advisory boards including Arctaris Impact Investors and Commonweal Ventures.

At the University of Michigan, she serves on the faculty at the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) and founded the SEAS Sustainability Clinic in Detroit. She also played a pivotal role in landing the first-in-the-nation Apple Developer Academy in Detroit.

She is a three-time appointee of Governor Gretchen Whitmer, currently serving on the Michigan Council on Climate Solutions, and was appointed by Mayor Mike Duggan to the inaugural Detroit Women’s Commission.

A dynamic global speaker, Duggan moves rooms from conversation to action. She has spoken at the World Economic Forum, the Milken Institute, and Aspen Ideas, and serves on the U.S. State Department’s Global Speakers Bureau. 

Booking Inquiries: kerrycduggan.com

Duggan grew up in Michigan and played competitive basketball at Detroit Country Day School before earning Division I scholarships to St. John’s University and the University of Vermont (B.S.). She holds an M.S. from the University of Michigan.

She was the one coaches wanted on the court when the team was down, with seconds on the clock. Not much has changed.

Complex System Strategy:

• Strategic Alignment & Executive Advisory: We accelerate infrastructure deployment by aligning decision-makers across public, private, and institutional sectors. By connecting clients with an unmatchable global network, we ensure that leaders operating on different incentives and timelines can translate strategy into coordinated action.
• Real-Time Problem Solving: We provide trusted counsel during moments of friction or inflection when timelines are compressed or conditions change. This includes our 30/90 Day Strategic Sprints—a rapid-response model helping boards and C-Suites resolve complex issues quickly without losing trust or control.
• Intelligence & Policy Translation: We provide "Reading the Tea Leaves" analysis: translating complex policy signals into actionable business intelligence. We ensure your initiatives are grounded in sound strategy and the "internal radar" of your leadership is tuned to shifting global and national dynamics.

Place-Based Implementation:

• Deployment & Site Selection Strategy: We navigate the regulatory, political, and physical dynamics of project build-outs. From site selection and permitting to regional industrial scale-up, we ensure projects are structured to move through approval and implementation with maximum efficiency.
• Stakeholder Mapping & Risk Mitigation: We identify the stakeholders who matter, assess sources of friction or opposition, and design engagement strategies that protect credibility and momentum. We solve the "Missing Link" by clearing the institutional bottlenecks that technology and capital alone cannot solve.
• The "Red Carpet" Regional Tour: A signature service for global firms and capital providers seeking deep-dive immersion into critical industrial power centers. We facilitate the high-level introductions and site-specific intelligence required for real-world deployment at speed and scale.

High-Impact Convenings:

• Private and Public Convenings: We design and lead mission-critical engagements, including our signature Game Changer Luncheons, where cross-sector intelligence is traded and high-stakes deployment decisions are de-risked among global capital drivers and public sector leaders.
• Third-Party Validation & Trust Equity: We leverage the firm’s established "Trust Equity" to uplift client profiles through strategic positioning and narrative alignment, helping to build the social license and movement-building stories required for long-term project success.
• Movement-Building & Strategic Advisory: We draft and execute the narratives and sign-on coalitions that align institutional and community interests, ensuring that a project’s strategic narrative matches the physical reality of its impact.

Resilience Engineering:

• Capital Strategy & Alignment: We help position projects for investment and reduce perceived risk so that financing can move in parallel with development. We position clients to capture the "Resilience Dividend" through better-engineered industrial and economic outcomes.
• External Brain (Advisory Board) Management: We stand up and manage bespoke Advisory Boards—expertly balancing demographics and subject matter expertise—to ensure leadership teams maintain an elite global perspective on emerging physical, security, and environmental risks.
• Security & Industrial Integration: We align energy security solutions with global stability prerequisites. Our framework ensures that new technologies are engineered to endure within an "environment-as-infrastructure" context, supporting long-term industrial scaling and regional retention.