Carol A Petsonk

Carol A. (“Annie”) Petsonk is Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Aviation and International Affairs at the United States Department of Transportation. She has over three decades of experience in international negotiations, including bilateral, regional, and multilateral negotiations on aviation, trade, and the environment. She is an internationally recognized expert in these fields, has attended Assemblies of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) since 2013, and served from 2014 to 2021 as an expert observer on ICAO’s Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection. She helped develop ICAO’s landmark Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA), a global program supported by the U.S. aviation industry. She also assisted in drafting standards to implement CORSIA, and developed policy recommendations to advance sustainable aviation fuels. She has testified in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, and authored and co-authored more than seventy articles, book chapters, presentations, blogs, and other materials. During her previous federal government service in the U.S. Department of Justice and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Petsonk represented the United States in cases of strategic significance to the Executive Branch, organized the international work of DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, and participated in interagency development of international policy, including trade and environmental policy. At the United Nations Environment Programme (Nairobi), she was involved in the development of one of the world’s most successful environmental agreements, the 1987 Montreal Protocol on the Ozone Layer. She served for twenty-five years as international counsel at the non-partisan, non-profit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). She has worked in the private sector, and she has taught for over two decades as a member of the adjunct faculty of the George Washington University Law School. She is a member of the bars of Massachusetts and Colorado. Petsonk is a graduate of Harvard Law School and of The Colorado College, which also awarded her an honorary degree. She is married to John Watts. They have one son, Nicholas.