Leah Stokes is the Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at UC Santa Barbara, where she is also affiliated with the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the Environmental Studies Department, and serves as policy director of the 2035 Initiative.

Her research focuses on energy, climate and environmental politics, particularly public opinion, voting behavior and state-level policy. Her work has been published in top journals including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Nature Energy, Energy Policy, and Environmental Science & Technology. She has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian and CNN, and is frequently quoted in national media.

She is the author of "The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet" (MIT Press, 2026), which tells the inside story of how the largest climate law in American history passed. Her first book, "Short Circuiting Policy", was named one of the top five climate books of 2020 by The New York Times. She also co-hosts the climate podcast "A Matter of Degrees."

Stokes holds a PhD in Public Policy from MIT, where she also earned a master's in political science, an MPA in Environmental Science & Policy from Columbia's School of International & Public Affairs, and a BSc from the University of Toronto. Before academia, she worked at the Parliament of Canada and Resources for the Future.