President Obama Announces Intent to Nominate John Bryson as Department of Commerce Secretary

President Obama will nominate John Bryson as the Secretary of Department of Commerce. Bryson will play a key role as a member of the President’s economic team, bringing decades of knowledge and experience in the public and private sectors, and will provide valuable ideas and initiatives to strengthen America’s competiveness around the world. John Bryson was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison and Edison Mission Group, from 1990 to 2008.

He is a director of The Boeing Company, The Walt Disney Company and Coda Automotive, Inc., and is a senior advisor to KKR. He is chairman of the board of BrightSource Energy, the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), and the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) Board of Overseers. He also serves as co-chairman of the Pacific Council on International Policy (PCIP).

Bryson is a trustee of the California Institute of Technology and a director of The California Endowment and the W. M. Keck Foundation. He serves on the Advisory Board of Deutsche Bank Americas. He also previously served on a number of educational and environmental boards, including as chairman of the California Business Roundtable, co-chairman of the Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA), trustee of Stanford University, and as a member of the U.N. Secretary-General’s Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change (AGECC).

Bryson also served as president of the California Public Utilities Commission, chairman of the California State Water Resources Control Board, and on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations. At the start of his career, he was a co-founder and attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a national and international environmental group. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School.