Shawn Hamilton, the Florida Department of Management Service’s Secretary, keynotes the 2024 Florida Environmental Permitting Summer School.
Hamilton has worked at the department since 2007, rising through the agency’s northwest office to the headquarters in 2020 before being named Secretary in 2021.
He served as ombudsman and public affairs manager in DEP’s Northwest District Office at the beginning of his career and was promoted to assistant district director in 2010. He was appointed director in 2011. In that office, he was responsible for regulatory matters within the district’s 16-county jurisdiction.
In 2020, Hamilton was promoted to interim deputy secretary of Land and Recreation, moving into leadership at DEP’s headquarters in Tallahassee. He was formally appointed as deputy secretary in 2021. In that role, he oversaw operations of the state’s award-winning Florida State Parks system as well as the state’s Florida Forever land buying program and other programs.
Gov. Ron DeSantis named Hamilton Secretary in August 2021, after he held the role as interim beginning that summer. He has since been subsequently confirmed by the Florida Senate as Secretary.
As Secretary, Hamilton has overseen billions in funding to work on Everglades restoration, springs protection, land buying, parks operations, water quality and quantity projects, environmental research programs, and other priorities as the head of the state’s environmental protection agency.
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, according to his DEP biography.
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.
Hamilton 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.
Hamilton has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Troy State University with a minor in business.
The Secretary is responsible for more than 2,900 full-time and 1,300 part-time employees in protecting Florida’s water and natural resources. Along with oversight of the agency’s strategic and executive leadership teams, DEP’s regulatory programs, ecosystem and restoration programs and land and recreation programs.
