Richard Hayes
Richard Hayes, PhD, was most recently visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley College of Natural Resources / Energy and Resources Group. He was founding executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, serving in that role from 2001 through 2012. He has written and spoken widely concerning democratic governance of science and technology, economic inequality, and the need for social oversight of the new human biotechnologies. Hayes has been active in social and political organizing since his student days at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. In the 1970s he worked as a community organizer with a wide range of progressive organizations. In the early 1980s he served as executive director of the San Francisco Democratic Party and ran the electoral field operations for the late Congressmembers Phillip Burton and Sala Burton. From 1983 through 1992 he served on the national staff of the Sierra Club, first as assistant political director and then as national director of volunteer development. In the early 1990s he was chair of the Sierra Club's Global Warming Campaign Committee. In 1999 he began the work that lead to the creation of the Center for Genetics and Society in 2001. He holds a PhD in Energy and Resources from the University of California at Berkeley. His current website is For A Human Future .
