Still serving · 2025–
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Secretary of HHS
Riverkeeper lawyer who sued the companies, then took Health and Human Services. Waterkeeper Alliance is still the largest clean-water network on earth.
- On the file
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- Of 13
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- The building
- In
Career
Awards, firsts, the work
Riverkeeper, then the Hudson file
He started as an attorney for the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association — Riverkeeper — and became its chief prosecuting attorney. Senior attorney at NRDC. The work was forcing cities and companies to obey the Clean Water Act on a river that had been a dump.
SourceHHSFounded Waterkeeper Alliance
June 1999, Southampton: he and a few dozen keepers founded the Alliance. He ran it for 21 years. HHS now puts the network at more than 300 groups, a million volunteers, 46 countries, 5.9 million square miles of water. The world’s largest clean-water nonprofit, built from a Hudson docket.
SourceHHS pressHundreds of verdicts, including DuPont and Monsanto
Class actions against chemical giants. Indigenous treaty and conservation cases. The HHS bio calls it hundreds of legal victories against corporations and agencies. A Kennedy who learned Washington by suing it.
SourceMiller Center26th Secretary of Health and Human Services
Sworn February 2025. The MAHA brief — food, pharma, chronic disease — is the job he asked for after a Democratic primary, an independent run, and an endorsement of Trump. The environmental docket is how he learned the agencies he now runs.
SourceHHS