Shawn Hamilton
Secretary, Florida Department of Environmental Protection
Shawn Hamilton has worked at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection since 2007, where he has risen through the ranks of the department.
Early in his career he served as ombudsman and public affairs manager in the
DEP’s Northwest District Office. He was promoted to assistant district director in 2010 and was appointed district director in 2011, and was subsequently promoted to interim deputy secretary of Land and Recreation in 2020 and formally appointed as deputy secretary in 2021.
Mr. Hamilton has 20 years of experience in the public and private sectors, where he has proven to be an effective and driven leader with the ability to influence and build trusted and constructive connections
with community stakeholders, elected and appointed municipal officials, and organizational team members.
He served as the agency’s environmental justice coordinator with responsibility for providing statewide guidance on sensitive environmental justice issues and was appointed as the principal state liaison for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice.
Shawn had provided effective leadership, incident command, and focused recovery during multiple large-scale natural and industrial emergencies to include Deepwater Horizon oil spill, International Paper Mill explosion, and hurricanes Irma and Michael.
He also led the creation and execution of reoccurring partnership meetings with the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, Gulf Power, Emerald Coast Utilities and Escambia County.
Mr. Hamilton has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Troy State University
with a minor in business. He and his wife Charlene have three sons, Christopher, Brandon and Joshua.
The secretary works alongside more than 2,900 full-time and 1,300 OPS employees to protect Florida’s water and natural resources. Along with oversight of the agency’s strategic and executive leadership teams, the DEP’s regulatory programs, ecosystem and restoration programs and land and recreation programs. ●
