Christine Palm

Christine Palm is finishing her third term as State Representative for the 36th General Assembly District in Connecticut, covering the towns of Chester, Deep River, Essex and Haddam. As Vice Chair of the Environment Committee, she successfully passed a bill requiring the teaching of climate change as part of the school curriculum, making Connecticut the first U.S. state to require this teaching in all public schools. For her efforts, Palm won the Walter Cronkite Environmental Education Award. Palm also wrote and enacted legislation to create and fund the Office of Aquatic Invasive Species (housed at CAES), with a special emphasis on managing hydrilla verticillata. 

Palm, an assistant Majority Leader, has consistently been named a “Legislative Champion” by the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters. Palm also shepherded bills banning PFAS and restricting trophy hunting through the Legislature, and helped get the modernized Bottle Bill across the finish line.

Palm’s other signature legislative efforts include enhancing women’s rights, securing gun safety measures, and increasing economic security for working families and young adult earners.

She has been a newspaper reporter, high school teacher, marketer of non-profit and cultural institutions, and once owned a bowling alley. She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for essay writing. She is the author of the poetry chapbook, Preparing the Ground.

In addition to conservation, Palm has a special interest in literary graves of New England and is in the process of researching a book on the final resting places of poets, authors, journalists, and other literary figures. She and her husband, the artist James Baker, have four sons.