Norton, Gale Ann, 1954-

Dates:

Birth 1954-03-11

Gender:

Female

Nationality: Americans

Language: English

Biographical notes:

Gale Ann Norton (born March 11, 1954) is an American lawyer and government official. She notably served as the 48th United States Secretary of the Interior from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush.

Born in Wichita, Kansas and raised there and in Thornton, Colorado, she earned B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of Denver. Following her graduation from law school, Norton worked as a senior attorney at the Mountain States Legal Foundation from 1979 to 1983. Norton was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution during 1983 and 1984 before taking a position at the U.S. Department of Agriculture as an assistant to Deputy Secretary Richard Edmund Lyng. From 1985 to 1990, she served as Associate Solicitor for the United States Department of the Interior, in which capacity she managed attorneys employed by the National Park Service and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Norton returned to Colorado after her stint at the Department of the Interior, and was elected as the state's first female Attorney General in 1991. As Attorney General, Norton led the state's attorneys in defending state laws, including Colorado Amendment 2, a 1992 state constitutional amendment that prohibited any level or branch of state government from recognizing homosexuals as a protected class. She unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996, losing the Republican primary to Wayne Allard.

Due to state term limits, she was prohibited from seeking a third term as Attorney General. After leaving the Attorney General's Office, Norton was a senior counsel at Brownstein, Hyatt & Farber, a Denver-based law firm, working there until being nominated as Secretary of the Interior in 2001. In the face of crises including the September 11th attacks and the War on Terror, increasing domestic energy production became a major focus for Norton’s term. She oversaw lands and offshore areas that produced a third of America's domestic oil, natural gas, and coal. She was actively involved in consideration of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, offshore and onshore oil and gas production, coal mine leasing and reclamation, hydroelectric generation, as well as biomass, wind and geothermal development.

Norton returned to Colorado as General Counsel for Royal Dutch Shell Unconventional Oil, serving in that role from 2007 to 2010. She was a member of Shell’s global legal leadership team, and handled legal, regulatory and governmental issues for Shell’s oil shale and in-situ oil sands projects, primarily in Colorado and Alberta. Norton is currently a Senior Advisor for Clean Range Ventures, an energy technology venture capital firm. She serves on boards for the Federalist Society, the Reagan Alumni Association, and the University of Colorado Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute.