Briggs White, Ph.D., serves as deputy executive director of the Biden Administration’s Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization. In this role, he works hand in hand with the 11 federal agency members of the IWG to advance its mission. The IWG is identifying and coordinating opportunities to connect energy communities for federal investments to help ensure the shift to a clean energy economy creates good-paying union jobs, spurs economic revitalization, remediates environmental degradation and supports energy workers in coal, oil and gas, and power plant communities. Prior to being appointed deputy executive director, White was central to a multi-agency effort to prepare the IWG’s initial report, which described existing mechanisms and provided recommendations for future actions that could support and revitalize the economies of energy communities.

White joined the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in 2007 and most recently served as a technology manager for three research and development programs, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management: High Performance Materials, Water Management, and Energy Storage. He is currently based out of NETL’s Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, site and worked at NETL’s Morgantown, West Virginia, site from 2007 to 2015. White holds degrees in materials science and engineering from Alfred University (B.S.), the University of Florida (M.S., Ph.D.) and the University of Rome (Ph.D.) with an emphasis on solid-state high-temperature electrochemical devices.

Sarah M. Forbes is currently the Director at the Office of Carbon Management Technologies of the U.S. Department of Energy. Sarah began her career at the National Energy Technology Laboratory, working on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) during the program’s formative years. While at the World Resources Institute (WRI), a nonprofit environmental think tank, Sarah led all aspects of an expert stakeholder process resulting in two seminal guidelines documents for CCS and stakeholder engagement for CCS still in use. Building on this work, she created a bilateral project to interpret the Guidelines to a China-specific framework. Her previous experience also includes Director for Carbon Capture Utilization and Sequestration at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Sarah’s experience includes testifying for US congress on CCS, shale gas and clean energy. Sarah has authored numerous publications, including reports, technical and policy papers, and book chapters. She has been instrumental in the development of US, Canadian, and international standards for CCS. Sarah has provided regulatory and environmental expertise on CCS and clean energy technologies to the Asian Development Bank for China and the World Bank for South Africa. She has served on several advisory committees in areas such as international standards and regulatory development and is a former member of two Federal advisory groups to the DOE. Sarah volunteers for her local trail organization, including as the race director for a nonprofit half marathon. She holds a B.S. from Wheaton College in Biology and a M.S. from Mississippi State University in the Biological Sciences.

Paul Sabella serves as the Director of Enterprise Resilience for Southern Company Services (SCS) with overall responsibility for the continued development and implementation of the system-wide Business Continuity, Crisis Management, and Enterprise Security programs. Also, this position supports the Chief Legal Officer and EVP Operations in their roles as Co-Chairs of the Business Assurance Council in ensuring that proper business security risk oversight and coordination exists among various groups, including the Board of Directors, Management Council, and Security Council. The Enterprise Resilience department was created in 2019 to integrate the efforts of Business Assurance with key security initiatives all while promoting a culture of preparedness through a consistent, all-hazards approach to continuity planning and incident response.

In his 26 years at Southern Company, he has worked in areas ranging from transmission & distribution engineering to finance & capital markets to enterprise risk management. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and earned an MBA with a concentration in finance from Georgia State University. In June of 2010, he became a Chartered Property and Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) and in August 2013 earned an Associate in Risk Management (ARM) certification.

He currently serves on the Board of the Southern Company Employees PAC and is Chairman Emeritus and founding member for the Board of the Edison Electric Institute ERM Committee.