Eric Drummond is an entrepreneur, business development ecosystem builder, and a former partner at one of the globe’s largest international law firms, now with 48 offices in 22 countries. He has more than 25 years of business, and complex administrative law experience, with a focus in emerging technology, telecom, next gen digital architecture, and alternative energy issues. Drummond has been recognized internationally in Who’s Who in American Law, SuperLawyer, and Martindale Hubbell’s Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers.
Drummond moved to Colorado in 2003, and in 2007, was elected Mayor of a small community in Colorado in a four-way race by the largest margin in a contested Mayoral race in the history of the city. During his term in office, in 2008, the city was recognized by Fodor’s Travel Guide as “One of the Coolest Small Towns in America”. He also has represented the U.S. Department of Energy in the nation’s $32 billion Section 1705 Loan Guaranty Program and led the development of the then-largest High Concentrating Solar PV generation plant in the world, as well as conducting diligence on a novel fuel plant utilizing the two-stage catalytic conversion of municipal waste to create fuel alcohol for jet fighter aircraft. Drummond was appointed to Colorado’s Renewable Energy Development Team by the Governor in 2011 and in 2012, he was asked to assist in creating the National Renewable Energy Lab’s (NREL) Energy Fellows Institute, where he founded the Clean Energy Generation program and ultimately served as Expert-in-Residence and Co-Managing Director.
An advocate of innovation, job creation, and the business community, he was appointed in 2013 by the President of the Senate to the Board of Colorado’s Venture Capital Authority, the State’s premier seed and early stage institutional venture fund and currently serves as the Board Chair. In 2014, Drummond was appointed to the 5-member Foundation Board of Directors of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. UCAR manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the nation’s premiere federally funded research lab in weather forecasting, climate, and the earth sciences.
In 2016, Drummond founded the Innovation Corridor. The Innovation Corridor is a unique B2B technology enhancement and investment platform composed of two co-anchor national labs (NREL and NCAR), both with leadership-class supercomputers (including the fastest supercomputer in the world dedicated to advanced energy research), Fortune 500 companies, academic institutions and entrepreneurs, and federal agency partners. In July 2019, on behalf of the Department of Commerce, NSF and NASA, the Innovation Corridor launched the nation’s Department of Commerce-NIST GCTC Supercomputer Modeling and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Cluster for Smart Cities and Regions and was appointed to the GCTC Smart Regions Leadership Council. More recently, he was appointed to HUD’s “VAG Innovation Network” and as a founding Board Member of the Colorado Clean Energy Found, a “chartered” Green Bank.
He received his Undergraduate Degree in Philosophy (emphasis in Symbolic Logic and First-Order Predicate Calculus) from the University of Texas at Austin and his Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of Texas School of Law.