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Director of the Center for Energy and Environment and Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Daren Bakst is Director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment and a Senior Fellow. In this role, he manages, develops, and leads the coalition, advocacy, and research activities of the Center, which is one of the most effective advocates for Free Market Environmentalism.
Before joining CEI as Deputy Director in March, 2023, Daren was a Senior Research Fellow in Environmental Policy and Regulation at the Heritage Foundation, where he played a leading role in the launch of the organization’s new energy and environment center, and created and hosted the Heritage Foundation’s energy and environment podcast the “PowerCast.” During his decade at Heritage, Daren wrote about energy and environmental policy, food and agricultural policy (including editing and co-authoring the book Farms and Free Enterprise), regulation, and trade among other topics.
Daren also worked on environmental policy and regulation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he was a policy counsel and served as the executive to the association’s Government Oversight, Operations & Consumer Affairs committee, which was responsible for issues such as regulatory process reform. Daren has significant state level experience, working for seven years at the Raleigh, N.C.-based John Locke Foundation, one of the largest state-based, free-market think tanks. As director of legal and regulatory studies, his broad portfolio included energy and environmental policy, regulatory reform, and property rights.
Daren has testified numerous times before Congress, regularly submits comments to federal agencies and has appeared in or been quoted by a wide range of media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Times, CNN, Fox Business News, Al-Jazeera America, and U.S. News and World Report. He is a member of the Federalist Society’s Environmental Law and Property Rights Executive Committee and serves on the College Level Advisory Board for Constituting America, an organization that informs and educates about the importance of the U.S. Constitution.
Daren, who hails from Florida, received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from George Washington University. A licensed attorney, he holds a law degree from the University of Miami and a master of laws degree from American University.
Chief Counsel to Senator Marsha Blackburn, United States Senate
Jessica Vu formerly served as Chief Counsel to Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), where she advises on Senate Judiciary Committee issues. Previously, as Counsel to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), she worked on judicial nominations and the confirmation of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court.
Jessica has worked in all three branches of government, and has experience in local, state, and federal politics. After law school, she clerked on the Supreme Court of Texas for Judge Don Willett (now of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit). She then clerked for Judge John McBryde of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. She was a prosecutor for three years at the Harris County District Attorney’s Office before going on to serve Texas Governor Greg Abbott as his Public Information Coordinator and Assistant General Counsel. She was then Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the United States Department of Justice, focusing on discrimination in higher education.
Jessica graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with highest honors in Political Science, and a minor in Southeast Asian Studies. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was Executive Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. She is a member of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Washington, D.C. and serves on the board of the Federalist Society’s D.C. Young Lawyers Chapter.
