Join us for an event and reception to kick off Energy Week 2022! The event will feature a keynote talk by resilience expert and scholar Alice C. Hill exploring what it will take to safeguard communities locally and globally in the years to come. Hill is the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and Environment, Council on Foreign Relations and previously served as Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and Senior Director for Resilience Policy on the National Security Council (full bio below). After the keynote, network over food and drink with students from across the region, community experts, Duke alumni, industry representatives, and more at our opening reception.

This event is co-hosted by the Sanford School of Public Policy as part of the Rubenstein Distinguished Lecture series.

Alice C. Hill

David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment Council on Foreign Relations

Alice C. Hill is an expert on building resilience to catastrophic risks. She previously served as Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and Senior Director for Resilience Policy on the National Security Council staff where she led the development of national policy, including executive orders related to natural disasters, national security, and climate change. Prior to this, Hill served as senior counselor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). At DHS, she led the formulation of the department’s first-ever climate adaptation plan and the development of strategic plans regarding catastrophic biological and chemical threats, including pandemics. Hill currently serves as the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council on Foreign Relations and was a Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. She is the author of The Fight for Climate After COVID-19 and co-author of Building a Resilient Tomorrow. She currently serves on the boards of the Environmental Defense Fund and Munich Re Group’s U.S.-based companies. In 2020, Yale University and the Op-Ed Project awarded her the Public Voices Fellowship on the Climate Crisis. Earlier in her career, Hill was a supervising judge on both the Los Angeles Municipal and Superior Courts as well as a federal prosecutor and chief of the white-collar crime unit at the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, California.

Innovation takes many forms, including advances in technology, policy, finance, and communications. This event will begin with a series of short panels, where participating organizations will have the opportunity to share how their work contributes to a clean and equitable energy future.

Following the panel discussions, we will host coffee chats for organizations to connect with small groups of interested students. Our goal is not for students to secure a job, but rather to create a space where students and organizations can ask questions and speak candidly about the clean energy transition.

This event will be held in a hybrid format, and the panel sessions will be open to members of the public. Coffee chat sign ups will be made available approximately two weeks before the event – if you register below, you will receive information about sign ups by e-mail. Note: If you are interested in attending our Smart Home Tour (at 6 pm) or our Energy and Human Flourishing Dinner (at 6:30 pm), sign up for chats between 5:00 – 6:00 pm.

Keynote Speaker: Julian Spector ’14, Senior Reporter, Canary Media

Julian Spector is senior reporter at Canary Media, where he reports on the rise of clean energy. He worked at Greentech Media for nearly five years. Before that he reported for CityLab at The Atlantic and conducted grant-funded freelance journalism on climate impacts in Bangladesh. His stories have also appeared in The Guardian, HuffPost, Al Jazeera America and more. He graduated from Duke University and now roams the world in search of clean energy breakthroughs.

Panel: Building Better Business Ecosystems

• Aamir Shams, Senior Associate of Climate-Aligned Industries, RMI
• Brittney Boucher, Senior Associate, Coho Climate Advisors
• Jessica Lam, Market Development Specialist, Microsoft
• Dan Vermeer, Associate Professor & Executive Director, Duke Center for Energy, Development, and the Global Environment

Panel: Engaging Stakeholders

• Danielle Byrnett MPP ’05, Senior Director, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC)
• Yesenia Rivera, Executive Director, Solstice Initiative
• Nicole Buell MEM ’11, Director of Federal Climate Innovation, Environmental Defense Fund
• Gudrun Thompson, Senior Attorney and Energy Efficiency Regional Leader, Southern Environmental Law Center

Panel: Shaping Markets

• Danielle Decatur, Director of Environmental Justice, Microsoft
• Ashley Smith, Chief Technology & Innovation Officer, AES
• Tim Cortes, Chief Technology Officer, Plug Power
• Yinka Bode-George (moderator), Interim Executive Director, Sharing the Power Foundation

This special event will begin with a panel discussion including activists, scholars, and leaders with expertise in diverse fields – from energy justice to economics to psychology – to set the tone for the evening and provide attendees with some “food for thought.” Then, participants will enjoy a seated dinner with fellow guests, including community members, peers, and speakers, about how we can support a thriving society and planet. We hope that attendees will leave with full hearts, minds, and stomachs as they reenter their lives and work.

Speakers

Carla Norwood, ’97, MEM ’01

Executive Director, Working Landscapes

Carla co-founded Working Landscapes in 2010 (with her husband and co-conspirator Gabriel Cumming) with the goal of creating community prosperity rooted in the local assets of her home community in rural, low-income northeastern NC. An enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe, she earned a PhD in Ecology from UNC Chapel Hill in 2009. She has expertise in building redevelopment, stakeholder engagement and value-added vegetable processing. She also advocates for climate mobilization to ensure a livable future for her children, her community and the biodiversity with whom we share our home planet.

Nikhil Kaza

Professor of Land Use and Environmental Planning, University of North Carolina

Dr. Kaza works at the intersection of urbanization patterns, local energy policy, and equity. He takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying how institutional innovations help or hinder cities, how organizations achieve their energy and environmental goals, and how these innovations might have a differential impact on different groups. Lately, he has been wrangling large spatial and non-spatial datasets to better understand how urban systems and institutions co-evolve in different parts of the world.

Liz Kalies

Director of Science, The Nature Conservancy

Liz Kalies is the Director of Science for the North Carolina Chapter of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and an adjunct assistant professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. She is a terrestrial ecologist, with expertise in wildlife field ecology, forest restoration and quantitative ecology. At TNC, she focuses on (1) coordination of large-scale monitoring to assess land protection outcomes, (2) using evidence-based synthesis approaches to answer management questions, and (3) research on wildlife ecology and connectivity, particularly in the context of renewable energy development.

Prior to joining TNC in 2015, Liz worked at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh on the eMammal camera-trapping study. Before that, she worked extensively on forest restoration and wildfire and the impacts on wildlife communities, with the Ecological Restoration Institute in Arizona. She has a PhD in wildlife ecology from Northern Arizona University, a master’s degree in ecology from Yale University, and a BS in biology from Cornell University.

Yinka Bode-George

Interim Executive Director, Sharing the Power Foundation

Yinka N. Bode-George is the Interim Executive Director for Sharing the Power Foundation – a national philanthropic nonprofit that advances environmental justice and an inclusive clean energy future through grantmaking and seeding the next generation of environmental leaders. In this role, Yinka provides the overall strategy and development for the Foundation.

Yinka also leads the strategy and management of Volt Energy Utility’s environmental justice and community impact practice. As an environmental health advocate, Yinka has worked to advance environmental justice and sustainable development through policy advocacy and community building. Prior to joining Volt’s team, she led the Environmental Health Program for the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators. Yinka has served as the Public Policy & Program Manager for Maryland Philanthropy Network where she cultivated opportunities for Maryland philanthropists to improve community conditions.

Working alongside peers, participants will combine business, engineering, and policy components to maximize impact while also prioritizing equity and efficiency. A panel of experts will judge the teams and select the winner — and will take the proposal into consideration as they shape EV plans for Durham and North Carolina!

This year’s event will center on expanding electric vehicle access in Durham. Teams will be designing a holistic strategy on behalf of a mock Durham agency that incorporates a variety of technology, business, policy, marketing, and equity components. Prizes will be awarded to the most innovative solution!

Moderators and Judges

Jennifer Weiss

Senior Advisor, Climate Change Policy, North Carolina Department of Transportation

Jennifer Weiss is the Senior Advisor for Climate Change Policy at the North Carolina Department of Transportation where she coordinates climate-related transportation activities across NCDOT and works closely with the state’s experts to help inform North Carolina’s climate policies and programs, including the North Carolina Clean Transportation Plan. Prior to this role, Jen worked at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University on the Climate and Energy team where she focused on the intersection of energy and environmental policy.

Matt Abele

Director of Marketing and Communications, North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association

As NCSEA’s Director of Marketing and Communications, Matt Abele helps to drive the strategies designed to enhance the brand and scope of NCSEA. This role collaborates with teams across the organization to oversee external communications efforts, media strategy, marketing tactics, and education initiatives. Prior to joining NCSEA, Matt specialized in marketing and communications for environmental/cleantech organizations at the national and local levels. Matt holds a Master’s degree in Communication from North Carolina State University and a Bachelor’s degree in Sustainable Technology from Appalachian State University. Additionally, Matt holds a Certificate in Renewable Energy Management along with a NABCEP Entry Level PV Installer Certification.

Sean Ackley

E-Mobility Segment Lead, Americas, Hitachi Americas, Ltd.

Sean Ackley has had a career focus on electrical infrastructure technologies and execution projects. As Hitachi America’s resident expert on EV technologies, Sean leverages his background in cloud managed services, product development, testing interoperability, and construction project management in facilitating critical thinking around the transition of large fleets to electric powertrain. He has worked for several of the largest OEMs that are building EV infrastructure today and has led the deployment of several large fleet electrification pilots. Sean is also a patented researcher on technologies supporting the circulor economy of battery material, and is an engineering graduate of NC State University.

Evian Patterson

Assistant Transportation Director, Durham Department of Transportation

Evian Patterson is Assistant Transportation Director the City of Durham’s Department of Transportation where he oversees transit and mobility operations. He has over 13 years of experience in transportation planning, including large-scale transit and mobility projects in the built environment. Prior to his work in Durham, Evian served as an Administrator with the District of Columbia Department of Transportation where he led the development of curbside management services to provide access for pedestrians, transit and for-hire vehicle passengers, and on-demand delivery services. Evian holds a Master of Public Policy and Administration (MPP/MPA) in Urban Policy from New York University.