- Phone:
- 317-902-3610
- Email:
- jgmccabe@iu.edu
Biography
Janet McCabe is an environmental policy expert with a distinguished career in public service, law, and academia. From April 2021 to October 2024, she served as the deputy administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where she played a key role in shaping the nation's environmental policies and oversaw all aspects of management of the agency and its workforce.
From 2017 to 2021, McCabe was a professor of practice at the Indiana University McKinney School of Law and directed the IU Environmental Resilience Institute (ERI), where she began as assistant director for policy and implementation in 2017. She rejoined the Indiana University faculty in summer 2025 with a joint appointment at McKinney Law, O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and the ERI.
McCabe also served at the EPA starting in 2009, as principal deputy to the assistant administrator of the Office of Air and Radiation (OAR). She served as acting assistant administrator for OAR from 2013 through 2016. Her leadership at the EPA was instrumental in advancing critical air quality and climate change initiatives during President Obama’s two terms.
Before her work at the EPA, McCabe was executive director of Improving Kids' Environment, Inc., an environmental health advocacy organization focused on children’s health. From 1993 to 2005, McCabe held various leadership roles in the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s Office of Air Quality, including assistant commissioner for that office.
Before to moving to Indianapolis in 1993, McCabe was assistant attorney general for environmental protection in Massachusetts and the assistant secretary for environmental impact review, managing Massachusetts’ environmental review statute. She began her legal career clerking for Justice Neil L. Lynch of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
She was raised in Washington, D.C., and attended Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
Education
- JD, Harvard Law School, 1983
- AB, Harvard University, 1980