Phil Schiliro

Schiliro was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduated from Hofstra University. As an environmentalist teenager, he organized his neighbors against a business that was polluting a reservoir near his home. He got the media involved and helped shut down the company. He then spent the next quarter century fighting similar battles.(1) After graduating from Lewis & Clark Law School in Oregon in 1981, Schiliro moved to Washington, D.C., in order to work on environmental issues. He worked briefly for then-Reps. Butler Derrick (D-S.C.) and Tim Wirth (D-Colo.) before joining the staff of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who was then chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Health and Environment.(2) Waxman poached Schiliro from Wirth’s staff after observing the young staffer’s work on a bill that Wirth and Waxman thought would have “gutted” the Clean Air Act.(3)