He has a diverse past in which he studied political philosophy at the University of Florida, earned a law degree at the University of Virginia, practiced corporate and securities lawyer in Silicon Valley, and returned to graduate school at Stanford University, where he used techniques of isotope geochemistry to study the rise of the Rocky Mountains 60 million years ago. Since 2009, his research has focused on the human dimensions of global environmental change, and in particular the distributional effects of international trade and the phenomenon of carbon lock-in.