Paul Colgan
Senior Strategist
At the corner of business and government affairs, you will find Paul Colgan, a Senior Strategist at Strategia Consulting. Being involved with energy and environmental-related issues for more than 25 years, he is heading up the Clean Energy Coalition—a group recently formed to protect all Illinoisans’ consumer rights and the environment.
Paul’s public affairs experience is vast. As government affairs director for the Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago, he represented the interests of business and commercial consumers during the Illinois Electric Utility Deregulation legislative efforts in the 1990s. As a government affairs consultant to the Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago, Paul worked on rewriting the Chicago Energy Conservation Code. He recently served on the City of Chicago Building Decarbonization Working Group, where Paul helped compile recommendations for decarbonizing the built environment and reducing carbon emissions in Chicago.
As an entrepreneur, he founded EA Americas, LLC, a consulting firm focusing on climate and environment, social, and governance issues for those in real estate with a focus on the ISO14000 family of international environmental standards for climate reporting. Paul also assisted with the formation of BONI USA, a technology startup that provided navigation services to the visually impaired community.
A background in journalism laid the foundation for his public affairs career. Earning a master’s degree in Public Affairs Reporting from the University of Illinois-Springfield, Paul was a state government reporter in Springfield, Illinois, for the Chicago Daily News and then went on as a political reporter covering issues in Illinois and Missouri for the Herald-Whig in Quincy, Illinois.
Making a transition onto the legislative staff of the Illinois General Assembly, he homed in on skills that would lead Paul to become a consultant and lobbyist.
He has represented clients in real estate, technology, finance, energy, and agriculture industries at local, state, and national levels. He currently serves as the government affairs consultant for the Building Industry Association of Greater Chicago. Paul is active on various National Association of Home Builders committees dealing with energy, environment, building codes, zoning, and other related residential development issues.
He earned a degree in Government from the University of Notre Dame. Paul is a past president of the Chicago Area Public Affairs Group and former chairman of the Arts Commission in Wheaton, Illinois.