Herrick Fox

Rick Fox is a forester and public policy professional who served as Bioeconomy Coordinator for the US Department of Agriculture until March 2025. In this capacity he represented the Department on the White House National Bioeconomy Board Secretariat and coordinated activities across the Department to expand value chains in agricultural and woody biomass supply, biobased manufacturing, and market development for biobased products. He returned to USDA after a five-year expedition into the hemp industry. During that time he co-founded a hemp production company and a non-profit in value-chain capacity building for hemp and the bioeconomy, and co-chaired committees on government affairs and policy for domestic and international trade associations.

Prior to hemp, Rick's first tenure in USDA spanned fifteen years: mostly in the Forest Service, starting in land management on National Forests and later in policy with senior USDA officials and the US Senate Committee on Agriculture. Thereafter he led a division in agricultural trade capacity-building in USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service. In his early career, Rick lived in Siberia and the Russian Far East for six years in the 1990’s, working in conservation and forestry research.

Rick holds a B.S. from the University of California at Berkeley and a Master’s in Forest Science from Yale. An avid skier and hiker since early childhood, in his spare time he still practices gravity management on the mountainsides of northern Vermont, striving valiantly to keep up with his teenagers.