Monthly archive

USEA Now - March 2023

February 28th, 2023
USEA Now

Michelle Fox

Job Title: 
Senior Advisor for Equity, Labor and Economic Prosperity
Organization: 
Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office at USDOE

Dr. Michelle Fox serves as the Senior Advisor for Equity, Labor and Economic Prosperity for the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office at the US Department of Energy. She returned to DOE after spending several years working as a strategist for Innovation at the ACT Foundation and as a consultant on learning science & technology. She previously served as the Acting Director for Tech to Market and Strategist for Education and Training for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the US Department of Energy.

Credentials: 
Dr.

Hana Vizcarra

Job Title: 
Senior Attorney
Organization: 
Earthjustice
Hana Vizcarra is a senior attorney for National Climate at Earth Justice based in Washington D.C., where she advocates for and defends strong federal climate action. Before joining Earthjustice, she was a staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Environmental & Energy Law Program where she analyzed federal climate, environmental, and energy regulation and policy and studied private sector responses to climate change. She previously practiced environmental law with two national law firms where she worked on complex environmental litigation, compliance, and transactional matters covering a broad array of statutory areas and industries. While in private practice, she also maintained an active pro bono practice primarily focused on immigration law. Before becoming a lawyer, Hana worked in political research roles at labor and campaign organizations. Hana holds a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. from Pomona College.

Aarti Khosla

Job Title: 
Director
Organization: 
Climate Trends

Aarti is the Founder of Climate Trends, and she has over 20 years of experience working on various communication efforts across the environment sector, and FMCGs. She has dedicated the last 12 years to advancing the discourse on climate change in India. She holds an MBA in marketing from the Institute of Management Studies and an undergraduate degree in Zoology from Delhi University.

Request for Proposals – Battery Energy Storage Systems Market Study for Cambodia

The United States Energy Association (USEA) is inviting battery energy storage systems (BESS) or other relevant energy experts through this Request for Proposals (RFP) to submit proposals to conduct a BESS market study to support the Kingdom of Cambodia. Eligible applicants for this RFP include non-profits, for profit entities, individuals/consultants, and educational institutions. This is an activity implemented by the United States Energy Association (USEA) with funding from the U.S.

Samantha Hung

Job Title: 
Chief of Gender Equality
Organization: 
Asian Development Bank (ADB)
Samantha Hung, ADB Headshot

Samantha Hung is the Chief of Gender Equality Thematic Group at the Asian Development Bank where she provides leadership for advancing gender equality across all aspects of ADB operations and knowledge work. Samantha has over two decades of experience in gender equality at project, program and policy levels. Before joining ADB in 2009, she held various gender specialist roles, including for the New Zealand Agency for International Development, Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, UNICEF, and the UK Institute of Development Studies.

Allison Clements

Job Title: 
Commissioner
Organization: 
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)

Commissioner Allison Clements has two decades of public and private sector experience in energy regulation and policy, representing utilities, independent power producers, developers and lenders, nonprofits and philanthropies on grid policy issues. Commissioner Clements is the founder and president of Goodgrid, LLC, an energy policy and strategy consulting firm. Previously she spent two years as director of the energy markets program at Energy Foundation. Prior to her time at Energy Foundation and Goodgrid, Commissioner Clements worked for a decade at Natural Resources Defense Council in New York, NY, as the organization’s corporate counsel and then as director of the Sustainable FERC Project. Before that, Commissioner Clements spent several years in private legal practice, with the energy regulatory group at Troutman Sanders LLP (now Troutman Pepper) and then with the project finance and infrastructure group at Chadbourne & Parke LLP (now Norton Rose Fulbright).

Commissioner Clements has served as a federal energy expert in several capacities, including as a member of a National Academies of Sciences committee on grid resilience, as co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s electric grid initiative, and as a clinical visiting lecturer at Yale Law School.

Commissioner Clements grew up in Dayton, Ohio. She has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Michigan and a Juris Doctorate from The George Washington University Law School.

Samantha Power

Job Title: 
Administrator
Organization: 
USAID

Samantha Power was sworn into office as the 19th Administrator of USAID on May 3, 2021.

In leading the world’s premier international development agency and its global staff of over 10,000 people, Power will focus on helping the United States respond to four interconnected challenges: the COVID-19 pandemic and the development gains it has imperiled; climate change; conflict and humanitarian crises; and democratic backsliding. Power will also ensure that USAID enhances its longstanding leadership in areas including food security, education, women’s empowerment, and global health. Additionally, Power is the first USAID Administrator to be a member of the National Security Council, where she will ensure that development plays a critical role in America’s responses to a range of economic, humanitarian, and geopolitical issues.

Prior to joining the Biden-Harris Administration, Power was the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the William D. Zabel Professor of Practice in Human Rights at Harvard Law School. From 2013 to 2017, Power served in the Obama-Biden Administration as the 28th US Permanent Representative to the United Nations. During her time at the UN, Power rallied countries to combat the Ebola epidemic, ratify the Paris climate agreement, and develop new international law to cripple ISIS’s financial networks. She worked to negotiate and implement the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals, helped catalyze bold international commitments to care for refugees, and advocated to secure the release of political prisoners, defend civil society from growing repression, and protect the rights of women and girls.

From 2009 to 2013, Power served on the National Security Council staff as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. At the NSC, she advised the Obama-Biden Administration on issues such as democracy promotion, UN reform, LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, atrocity prevention, and the fights against human trafficking and global corruption.

An immigrant from Ireland, Power began her career as a war correspondent in Bosnia, and went on to report from places including Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. She was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and has been recognized as one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People,” one of Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers,” and by Forbes as one of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.” Power is an author and editor of multiple books, and the recipient of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction.

Power earned a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Damilola Ogunbiyi

Job Title: 
CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General
Organization: 
Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL)
CEO SEforALL

Damilola Ogunbiyi is the CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General (UN SRSG) for Sustainable Energy for All, and Co-Chair of UN-Energy. With Mrs. Ogunbiyi at the helm, Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) has entered into working relationships with over 200 partners, supported over 90 countries globally, and secured commitments of more than $600 billion in energy finance. This has been achieved through programmes such as Universal Energy Facility, Powering Healthcare, Women and Youth at the Forefront, Cooling for All, and Clean Cooking; and innovative initiatives such as UN Energy Compacts, Energy Transition Plans, Universal Integrated Energy Plans, the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI), and the Renewable Energy Manufacturing Initiative (REMI) among many others. Through her leadership, SEforALL has grown its global influence and country support providing clear pathways to accelerate progress towards universal energy access, ending energy poverty, and advancing the global just and equitable energy transition.

Prior to joining SEforALL, Mrs. Ogunbiyi was the first female Managing Director of the Nigerian Rural Electrification Agency where she initiated the Nigerian Electrification Project, a USD 550 million facility that is a joint World Bank and African Development Bank programme that to date provided energy access to over 5 million people across Nigeria. She also conceptualized the Energizing Economies Initiative, estimated to impact 1.2 million SMEs.

Before joining the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN), Mrs. Ogunbiyi was the first female General Manager of the Lagos State Electricity Board. Under her leadership, five independent power projects were completed to deliver over 55 megawatts of power to Lagos State hospitals, schools, and government facilities.

Mrs. Ogunbiyi is a member of the Global Leadership Council (GLC) of the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), an Advisory Board member of the Center on Global Energy Policy, a member of the Development Advisory Council of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), a member of the Clean Cooking Alliance Advisory Board, a member of the Advisory Board of University of Oxford’s Future of Cooling Programme, and Co-Chair of UN–Energy.

She is a global leader and advocate for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a focus on SDG7, which calls for access to reliable, affordable, sustainable, and modern energy for all by 2030.

Secondary Job Title: 
Co-Chair
Secondary Organization: 
UN-Energy

High-Level Policy Dialogue: Women Leaders Breaking Barriers for Gender Equity

March 7th, 2023
On March 7, on the eve of International Women’s Day 2023, USEA in collaboration with USAID will host a virtual High-Level Policy Dialogue: Women Leaders Breaking Barriers for Gender Equity. Join us virtually to celebrate diverse female voices from around the world who influence and shape energy policy.

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