Marilyn Averill is a retired environmental attorney and a Senior Fellow with the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment at the University of Colorado Law School.  Following a clerkship for the Colorado Supreme Court and a few years in private practice, Marilyn served as an attorney for the United States Department of the Interior, working primarily with the National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service.  She left the government in 1999 to pursue graduate studies at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she became interested in climate change.  Since 2008 Marilyn has served on the steering committee for the Research and Independent Non-Governmental Organizations (RINGO), one of the nine civil society constituencies under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.  She served as RINGO Chair from 2013 through 2015.

Marilyn’s research interests focus on international environmental governance, science policy, the politics of science, and the ethical implications of environmental issues, primarily in the context of global climate change.  She also is interested in how different professions manage and communicate about uncertainty.