Paul Carlson founded the non-profit reEarth in 2020 that works on smart and sacred water initiatives in NW Ohio and he serves on the Green Spot Advisory Board for the City of Columbus https://www.columbus.gov/GreenSpot/Home/. He is also a board member for the non-profit Resurrecting Lives Foundation https://resurrectinglives.org/ that helps veterans who suffer from Traumatic Brain Injuries. He was a member of the US Transition Collaborative Design Council from March 2020 until March 2022 https://www.transitionus.org/ and he served a three-year term on the Board of Simply Living https://simplyliving.org/ ending October, 2025.

Paul worked for seventeen years as the city’s first IT Project Manager. He was responsible for facilitating the city being recognized as the 2015 Intelligent Community Forum, Most Intelligent Community in the World https://www.intelligentcommunity.org/. He worked closely with The Ohio State University Center for Automotive Research, Autonomous Vehicle Pilot project https://car.osu.edu/, that was sponsored by the NIST Global City Team Challenge https://www.nist.gov/ctl/smart-connected-systems-division/iot-devices-and-infrastructures-group/smart-americaglobal-0 and he was part of the core team that responded to the first phase of Columbus ultimately winning the $40M USDOT Smart City Challenge. Paul was also a member of Mayor Coleman’s Green team and helped Columbus become certified as a four STAR sustainable community https://www.usgbc.org/leed/rating-systems/leed-for-cities-communities.

Paul attended the US Naval Academy for two years (Class of 1973) and received a BA in Political Science in 1976, and an MA in History in 1978, from Youngstown State University.