Ed M. Norton is a founding Trustee of the Rivian Foundation and the Founding Chair of the Conservation Lands Foundation. Norton was educated at Washington & Lee University, Columbia University and served in the Marine Corps from 1965-1968, discharged with the rank of captain. After receiving his J.D. from Harvard Law School, he served as a federal prosecutor from 1977 to 1981 with the US Attorney in Maryland, prosecuting federal criminal law and supervising environmental litigation in the U.S. District Court of Maryland. Ed joined The Wilderness Society in 1981, first serving as Special Counsel then Deputy Executive Director and Director of Membership and Development. In 1986, Ed became the founding President of the Grand Canyon Trust. He also was founding Chairman of the Rails-To-Trails Conservancy, and helped found and lead the Vietnam Veterans Reconciliation Project. In 1994, he became VP for Law and Public Policy of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
In 1999, Norton moved to China to become the Senior Advisor to The Nature Conservancy’s Yunnan Great Rivers Project to conserve biodiversity in northwest Yunnan Province and to establish a system of Nature Reserves and Protected Areas. Ed went on to serve as the Conservancy’s Deputy Director of the Asia-Pacific Region, based in Indonesia. He was also Senior Advisor to the USAID Orangutan Conservation Services Project in Indonesia. From 2009 to 2019, Ed was a Senior Advisor for Environmet/Social Governance with TPG Capital, a private equity firm.