Program: M.M.A., graduated 1999

Current Position: Board Member, Friends of the Waterfront, Newport RI

Biography: Tom Gibson returned to Newport in 2020 after a thirty year career in senior public policy positions in government and the private sector in Washington D.C. Since returning to Newport, Gibson has renewed his lifelong interest in protecting coastal access as a Board Member of the Friends of the Waterfront, a not-for-profit that serves as Newport’s “watchdog of the waterfront.”  He retired in 2020 as the President and CEO of the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), the trade association that represents the steel industry. Prior to joining AISI, Gibson had a long career in government service. He served as Chief of Staff and head of policy at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under Administrators Christine Todd Whitman and Michael Leavitt in the administration of President George W. Bush. He served as majority deputy staff director and majority counsel from 1995-2001 for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works under Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island, and after his death, Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire. He also worked at EPA in the first Bush Administration as a congressional liaison specialist. After leaving active duty in the U.S. Navy in Newport in 1985, he worked at the Raytheon Company for five years as an engineer and program manager while serving on the City of Newport Planning Board and the Aquidneck Island Planning Commission. He served at sea for four years on ships homeported in Newport and Norfolk, Virginia. In addition to his M.M.A. from URI, he earned a B.S. in Naval Architecture from the U.S. Naval Academy (1979), and a Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center (1994).