D. Reid Wilson was appointed by Governor Josh Stein to serve as Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), and he assumed the role in January 2025. From 2021-2024, Wilson served as Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (DNCR), a position he held since January 2021. He brings a wealth of experience in environmental protection, land conservation, and government and nonprofit leadership to DEQ.
From 2017-2020, Wilson was DNCR’s chief deputy secretary, responsible for the agency's natural resource divisions. Prior to joining DNCR, Wilson was the executive director of the Conservation Trust for North Carolina, a statewide nonprofit that advances land conservation and connects people to the outdoors.
In 2001 and 2002, he was a public affairs consultant to national environmental groups as senior vice president with M & R Strategic Services in Washington, DC. Prior to that, he served for nearly eight years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a political appointee in the Clinton administration, first as the agency’s public liaison director, then deputy chief of staff, and finally chief of staff under administrator Carol M. Browner.
Wilson was national political director of the Sierra Club from 1989-1993, managing the nation’s largest environmental political action committee, and before that he was an environmental advocate for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group in Washington.
Wilson has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Biology from Grinnell College in Iowa. He and his wife, Karen Rindge, live in Raleigh, and their two children are graduates of fine North Carolina public universities.