Coit leaving DEM to join Raimondo in Washington

Report: Coit to Follow Raimondo to Commerce Department

By ecoRI News staff

After more than a decade as the director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM), Janet Coit is being brought onboard at the U.S. Commerce Department by her former boss, Gina Raimondo, according to The Boston Globe’s Dan McGowan.

It’s unclear, according to McGowan, what job title Coit, who has led DEM under three governors, will hold at the Commerce Department.

A former top aide to U.S. Sen. John Chafee, Coit was originally appointed to lead DEM by Chafee’s son, Lincoln, who was elected Rhode Island’s 74th governor in 2010.

Before being selected to run DEM, Coit, a graduate of Dartmouth College and Stanford Law School, was the Rhode Island state director for The Nature Conservancy for 10 years.

Coit was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 2011 and 2015, and only one senator, Sam Bell, voted against her nomination in 2019.