Laura Smith Morton is a partner at Ashurst Perkins Coie in Washington DC. She advises clients with onshore and offshore infrastructure projects at every stage of development, with a focus on environmental review, permitting, natural resources, and public engagement. Laura also counsels companies on developing integrated approaches across the lifecycle of projects to reduce risk and improve permitting outcomes and community support. She works closely with clients to translate federal policies and processes into actionable development strategies. Laura further advises companies on regulatory compliance and strategic positioning for multi-million-dollar government funding and financing programs.

Laura previously served as senior director for offshore wind at American Clean Power, the leading U.S. renewable energy trade association, as well as acting deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She has held senior positions at the DOE, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and the Office of Management and Budget, where she led interagency efforts to streamline federal permitting for large infrastructure projects. Earlier in her career, Laura spent more than a decade in private practice representing energy companies in complex multidistrict litigation and in federal circuit and district court, ensuring compliance with a wide range of environmental, land use, and natural resource laws, and conducting environmental due diligence for project finance transactions.

Edward (Ted) Boling served as the country’s top National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) attorney as an associate director at the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) in the Executive Office of the President. Ted served at CEQ, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in Democratic and Republican administrations. His experience includes deep involvement in federal infrastructure permitting issues and the first comprehensive revision of CEQ’s NEPA regulations in over 40 years.

Drawing on over 30 years of high-level public service, Ted currently advises leaders on transportation and energy development projects, agencies that must hire outside counsel, and the environmental professionals that support them on the development of renewable energy, resource development, transportation, and infrastructure. Ted’s extensive government experience at CEQ included the development of the National Ocean Policy, CEQ’s climate change guidance, and the regulatory response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. He drafted NEPA guidance on mitigation and monitoring, cumulative impacts analysis, and the development categorical exclusions from detailed NEPA documentation. Ted advised the White House on the establishment of numerous national monuments, including the first marine national monuments in the United States and the largest marine protected areas in the world.

At DOI, Ted provided legal and policy advice on environmental issues and handled matters involving energy development on the outer continental shelf, including offshore wind power development, and the fast track for solar and wind energy projects on public lands.

At DOJ, in the first 10 years of his legal career, Ted litigated significant cases involving NEPA, endangered species, marine mammals, wetland protections, and management of public lands. He was involved in litigation concerning the Endangered Species Act, National Forest Management Act, and U.S. Coast Guard and Federal Transit Administration actions.