It was announced in February that Lawrence Linden was elected to the board of trustees for the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA).

Ronald L. Thompson, the chair of the TIAA board, said that Linden brings “vast experience in financial services, combined with strong expertise in technology and operations.” This includes years spent at Goldman Sachs and Company, where Linden served as a general partner and managing director. Although retired in 2008, he has stayed actively involved in the company as an advisory director, leading a project to establish a nature reserve in Tierra del Fuego, Chile and guiding the firm on its environmental policy.

Linden’s knowledge of and concern for environmental issues led him founder the Linden Trust for Conservation, an organization that seeks to stabilize Earth’s biodiversity and ecological processes for the benefit of humanity by raising the quantity and improving the effectiveness of financial resources.

Linden is also the chairman of the board of Resources for the Future, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that conducts independent research on environmental, energy, natural resource and public health issues, and serves as senior advisor to the Redstone Strategy Group, a management consulting firm in the conservation field.

Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Linden was a partner at McKinsey & Co., a management consultant company. During the Carter Administration, from 1978 to 1981, he served on the White House staff, developing technology policy for transportation and energy sectors and for environmental protection. He has also been a guest speaker at Ivy League schools, lecturing on the management of large-scale conservation programs.

Linden was a mechanical and aerospace engineering major at Princeton. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in 1976 from MIT.