Steven Bohlen selected as senior director for LLNL’s Office of Government and External Affairs

Steven Bohlen has been named as the senior director for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Office of Government and External Affairs (OGEA), Director Kimberly Budil announced today. His appointment is effective Sept. 18.

In this new role, Bohlen will partner with the Senior Management Team (SMT) to develop and manage strong and productive relationships between the Laboratory and various federal, state and local governmental stakeholders and a broad range of partner organizations. He will be responsible for planning and guiding the Laboratory’s federal, state and local governmental relations program and advocacy efforts, as well as building a strategy for engagement with the local community, various boards and councils and important partners such as the Livermore Lab Foundation, amongst others.

Bohlen will work in partnership with the Laboratory director and other senior leaders to ensure effective liaison between the Laboratory and the Administration, members of the U.S. Congress, federal agencies and departmental representatives, boards and commissions. In addition, he will supervise the Laboratory’s Offsite Fellows Program and Washington, D.C. office. As senior director for OGEA, Bohlen will report to the Laboratory director and be an essential member of the SMT.

“Steve's qualifications and prior leadership positions at the Lab, in Washington, D.C., and Sacramento make him well-suited to take on the challenges associated with this key senior management position,” Budil said.

Bohlen recently returned from assignment in Sacramento with the State of California as the acting state geologist and head of the California Geological Survey (CGS) within the California Department of Conservation (DOC), a position he held since June 2020. During this assignment, he worked closely with the secretary of Natural Resources, the Department of Conservation and the CGS leadership teams to prepare them to more broadly and effectively address California’s rapidly emerging geoscience needs. He assisted in creating the department’s Biomass Gasification Pilot Program, which will create carbon-negative hydrogen and/or liquid fuel from forest biomass in the Sierra Nevada, and he obtained funding to fully recapitalize the state’s seismic systems. Bohlen served as an adviser to the executive and legislative branches on ways to achieve California’s carbon neutrality goals through carbon removal and negative emissions strategies.

Previously, he served the DOC as state oil and gas supervisor from 2014–2015, leading organizational restructuring and laying the foundation for a modern, science-based program to regulate oil and gas under the guiding principle of public and environmental safety.

Prior to his recent assignment to the State of California, Bohlen served as the program manager for the Lab’s Energy and Homeland Security Program (E-Program) in the Global Security Directorate from 2016 through May 2020.

Bohlen holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in geology and geochemistry from the University of Michigan and an A.B. in liberal arts and geology from Dartmouth College.