Thornton is the founding CEO of ClientEarth, Europe's first nonprofit environmental law firm. Founded in 2007 and now operating globally, ClientEarth uses advocacy, litigation, and research to address the greatest challenges of our time - including climate change, biodiversity loss, and toxic chemicals. Thornton takes governments and corporations to court, and wins. And his client is the Earth.   

The New Statesman has named Thornton one of 10 people who could change the world. At the invitation of its Chief Justice, Thornton advises the Supreme People's Court of China on the development and enforcement of environmental law. He previously prevented Poland from building a new generation of coal-fired power stations and almost singlehandedly restored the enforcement of the Clean Water Act in the United States.

He is a solicitor of England and Wales, and a member of the bar in New York, California, and the Supreme Court of the United States. Last year, Thornton co-authored the book Client Earth, which tells the story of the organization's progress over the past decade. It won the Judge's Choice award at the inaugural Business Book Awards in 2018. 

Thornton graduated from Yale, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, and is a graduate of New York University School of Law, where he was Editor of the Law Review. He clerked with Judge John Minor Wisdom in the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, is a Conservation Fellow of the Zoological Society of London, and a fellow of the Ashoka Foundation. 

 To learn more about ClientEarth, visit: www.clientearth.org