Mandy Gunasekara

Mandy Gunesekara was Chief of Staff to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler during the Trump administration. She also held the positions of Senior Policy Advisor and Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator under EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. In these roles, she helped roll back Obama-era climate protection regulations and pushed Trump to exit the Paris Agreement. Upon the overturning of the Chevron precedent, she gleefully stated that the “era of trust the experts has ended.”

Gunasekara authored Project 2025’s EPA Chapter, where she calls for:

– Eliminating programs focused on climate change and reducing greenhouse gasses, including repealing regulations for hydrofluorocarbons, lowering standards on what constitutes radiological risk, and “reconsidering” the Cleaner Trucks Initiative.

– Eliminating the Integrated Risk Information System, a chemical assessment program that analyzes chemicals for toxicity and health impacts.

– Return to a Trump-era approach that allows corporations to withhold information about hazardous or toxic substances by categorizing the information as “sensitive information.”

– Revisiting the “hazardous substance” designation of polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS, better known as “forever chemicals” that are nearly impossible to eliminate once introduced to the environment.

In her chapter, she also claimed that the “EPA is amenable to being co-opted by the left” and that “embedded activists in the EPA seek to evade legal restraints in pursuit of a global, climate-themed agenda” that pushes “liberty-crushing regulations.” Gunasekara also calls for a “Day One Executive Order” that would, per reporting by Accountable “re-evaluate the EPA’s structure, review its existing rules, halt all grants to advocacy groups, reduce the agency’s workforce, and cease any EPA activities that lack clear and current congressional authorization.”

In January 2021, Gunasekara became a Principal at Section VII Strategies, LLC, which describes itself as a “boutique energy, environmental, and bitcoin investment firm” focused on providing curated regulatory solutions for clients ranging from blockchain start-ups to global public companies. Per reporting by Accountable: “Section VII Strategies has lobbied on behalf of the China-based solar company JinkoSolar US. As recently as the first quarter of 2024, Mandy Gunasekara’s husband, who is the founder of Section VII Strategies, has lobbied on behalf of JinkoSolar US as its counsel and director. Despite this, Gunasekara has claimed that Biden electric vehicle policy has worked to “sell out the American economy” to China.”

Gunasekara is currently a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, a Project 2025 Advisory Board member that opposed the Clean Power Plan and created a supporting group that aims to abolish the teaching of global warming in public schools, calling it “junk science.” She is also a Senior Fellow at a pro-fossil-fuel initiative created by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, another Project 2025 Advisory Board member, which was previously led by the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts. Gunasekara has testified in front of Congress against the Green New Deal and in support of ExxonMobil.

In March 2023, Gunasekara appeared on the podcast, The World According to Ben Stein, in an episode titled, “Jan 6^th, Lies, and Videotape.” She referred to Jan. 6 events as a peaceful protest and said she “had a lot of friends who were there.” She claimed the congressional investigation into the violent assault on the Capitol was “a sham from the beginning,” and asserted that new video evidence shows that “so much of what [Trump] said was absolutely right,” and “anyone who bets against Trump and Trumpism is on the wrong side, continually so.”

Prior to joining the Trump Administration, she worked for former Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a climate change denier who famously asked Gunasekara to hand him a snowball on the Senate floor while he mocked global warming.

This profile has been updated.