Award Presentations: Business and Technology Research & Innovation
good afternoon I'm Al Weinstein I'm one of the senior ambassadors here with over a decade experience in this endeavor and I have to admit that this been probably the highlight of my career for sure I'm here to present um an award in business to R Ali business award goes to um recognize leaders within private entities of any size ranging from small business to Fortune 500 corporations strong candidates will have accelerated or exp expanded adoption of clean energy within their own business footprint Raa has an interesting story she is h a person of color even though you will not say so when you see her her father is Jewish her mother is Chinese she grew up in Oakland California and she is a product of the California public school system however she went to school in Wisconsin Madison Wisconsin and I was an experience in itself going from Oakland to Medicine Wisconsin being a person of color that however gave her a very interesting background and appreciation for diversity gender inclusion and fairness which then she was able to put into her work that made her an excellent project manager why is that matter why does it really matter because when you do project management especially at the beginning project development requires a lot of stakeholder Outreach unless you appreciate all this diversity and whom you're talking to and how you dealing you will never get a permit and that's what made her set her apart from her peers so she accelerated her career in advancement and Excel in project development from the very very early start that gave her an ability to do land acquisition getting permits from over 30 plus agencies talking to investors doing project Finance structured project finance and everything else in between so her career spent from um she's now a director of project development at clearway clearway is one of the us-based companies unfortunately it is now owned 50% by uh French oil company but it used to be 100% us company that does solar and Battery project installations around United States and uh RI is now um uh a project developer and the director of project development for the West Coast so she's going to be expanding clearways footprint on the West Coast of United States which is a big deal because as you know that is where a lot of solar projects happening battery projects happening and I think it's going to only get increased in time so her track record includes successful development of what more than 1.8 gaw of utility scale solar in storage through construction and operation leading acquisition of over 25 solar assets from third party developers and leading due diligence and over 300 megawatt potential projects in Six States leading a portfolio of solar projects of over 5 gaw in the west deploying 21 Community solo projects 75 megawatt in Minnesota and New York and over 25 commercial industrial projects behind the meter in operation facilitating procurement of over $450 Million worth of solar modules from five different countries and pulling together all stages of development to make this possible including land land acquisition permits interconnection agreements and you heard how difficult those could be and project financing with complex structures in tax Equity cash Equity third party sales construction loans equipment loans and sale leasebacks so I am very thrilled to be able to present this award to Raisa um I come with a very different background as well and I can relate to what she had to grow up with and so congratulations [Applause] C afternoon everybody um it's been such an amazing two days here uh first time in Boston first time in a room full of such esteemed women and really grateful to be um in the club now and uh definitely look forward to attending this Symposium um in the Years coming um you know we heard yesterday climate change is real and we're behind uh but I have hope especially to hearing speakers like Gina yesterday and so many others that uh here in this room full of the best leaders um in the energy industry who happen to be women um my name is Risa Ry like Ry bre the letter e if that's helpful Risa uh and I really have built my career on uh human connections uh developing and building gigawatts worth of projects and really leaning into my own instincts uh fueled by a greater mission of the energy transition um as all mentioned uh you know I'm from Oakland and I think um yesterday during dinner there was a great Icebreaker uh what's good lesson or advice you've re you've received that has helped your career and I think it came to me very quickly and that was uh the value of authenticity uh being your full self as much as you can even at work um and you know we've heard so many facts now and Harvard Business Review articles that back up that theory that divers perspectives um make us measurably more successful um and I think that's really been key to my own success um all mentioned I have a slightly different background than a lot of my peers growing up in Oakland uh but I did learn The Importance of Being resourceful uh the importance of resilience and the value of strong culture and community that I think I've carried with me um as a kid I was a tinkerer and a builder um but a bit of an adrenaline junkie so at age eight if you asked me I would be designing rol coasters right now um and I was really lucky enough that um in my Oakland High School with some very special dedicated Educators uh they had a very unique engineering program uh that included really old school drafting like on a table in the vein of old you know kind of technical schools um and a little bit of AutoCAD and that's how I got my first job so it's interesting how how that works out that way um Madison Wisconsin was completely different uh than Oakland uh but I found my people I found community that I got to be deeply involved with uh working at the Multicultural Student Center being a live in diversity liaison um and really had an eye- openening experience um getting out of the Bay Area bubble frankly um that was really important I think for my um professional career as well um the power of resources uh is really my story at Wisconsin uh I ended up majoring in civil engineering which I could not have done without tutors and office hours and all of the the things that sometimes you need to help catch you up um and I think of this Symposium here today as another example of how resources can really Propel us forward um and then you know lucky me I somehow managed to graduate right at the the peak of the recession and after waitressing for a year and working for free for a year um I snagged my first infrastructure job in sewer repair so I got uh winch down manholes I did flow metering and don't get me wrong sewer infrastructure is super important but um I realized yeah I need to find a job I'm a little bit more passionate about um and was lucky enough to um land my first job as a drafter truly um at sunpow and um a lot of people who believed in me to help me kind of work up quickly from there um but coming back to today and this space full of all of these amazing leaders um I'm so grateful to win this award um it honors myself the nearly 15 years of work in the Renewables industry but it also acknowledges that we're only half done which I think is really important when we think about some of the messages here today about how much more work we have ahead of us um as Allah mentioned you know I'm growing a really big pipeline of projects in the west and have built a lot of projects um and the joke is always that like I'm a party planner for big solar and and batteries but my party takes like five to 10 years to plan something like that um but it's been great I've gotten to see the the industry progress from from a bunch of one-off DG projects to massive portfolios of distributed generation at schools and hospitals to community solar like all mentioned cornfields in Illinois dairy farms in New York you know solar around P ponds in Minnesota um and then now massive utility scale projects um and an urgent need to grow even more gigawatts um I was kind of telling Folks at dinner last night I was at plus and feeling kind of bummed out so much work ahead of us there's so much to do there's so many obstacles in the way the industry's gotten huge which I think creates new challenges and of course I'm going to say you know Gina again is the ultimate cheerleader for all of us in that optimism I think I came back renewed um and I would say the message you know especially from Private Industry which you've heard is we are ready I I would love to deploy every gigawatt I have in my pipeline but it's going to take um some really Creative Solutions very very quickly and really aligned with Private Industry um communicating really openly between utilities isos governments at all levels local communities um there has to be that intersection of policy and boots on the ground development to get steel in the ground and substations energized um but looking forward I think this is nothing new uh for many of us who've been in the industry for a while um and I hearken back to my dream of being a uh roller coaster designer at age eight I think I'm doing it it's the solar coaster and and I'm writing the highs and the lows and um you know look forward to coming up with Equitable Solutions with all of you um finally definitely want to thank uh the strong community that I have I would not have the career I have today without them my nominator boss Mentor maah Larin for always recognizing my career go growth um Zade oxu for hyping me up for this nomination which I definitely needed Andre saso who jump started my career when I was a baby engineer my badass women friends um I need them very much um my mom mom and dad who I'm sure are watching um streaming now and so many other people I've worked with Through The Years also to my amazing partner Patrick one of the five men here in the room um thank you so much loudest loud cheerleader who I've asked today to be a bit more quiet um and then my I guess for my final thoughts um I think when you get a group of powerful women like this together there's always a shroud of War stories to share um and we all have them but I think it's most important to focus on uh finding spaces and people that Foster growth and support each other the power of belonging um and I'm so glad to be with you all here today belonging together and building Community thank [Applause] you good afternoon I'm Bobby Kate garnick and I'm here to present the technology and Innovation award to introduce Dr xiiao is an incredible honor she embodies the essence of c3e in terms of her Cutting Edge research and science her leadership in a highly technical field and her ongoing commitment to advancing the role of female scientists and Engineers as we know the clean energy future will depend upon breakthroughs in battery research and the establishment of a domestic manufacturing capability G's research provides that pathway forward breakthroughs in lithium batteries and protocols to bridge industry and science descriptions of her work in clean energy science include such words as Leap Frog high performance transformation words that are music to our ears her leadership includes managing pn's battery ma materials and systems group coordinating among National Labs and major research institutions in her day job she leads the laboratory's battery materials and system group that's a very large group of people but going Beyond is how to describe her commitment to advancing women in a very intense field of science science where she makes a major difference and that's where I'm in awe of her she has she even LED 14 women to publish a perspective article on women in electrical chemistry and I think of that book now about women in chemistry and just overcoming and the fact that she wrote such an important article for women is very critical her mentorship is personal and she mentioned that one of her students Cath C Anderson is here in the room today so Cassidy and as important Shirley mang last year's award winner her colleague and her supporter essentially came overnight to support her as well so we're very honored to have Shirley here also of her many awards and accomplishments I will just mention one the EOL Lawrence award from doe which is one of the highest EST awards that Doe gives to its scientist and now she can add her c3e award to her CV so it is my pleasure to welcome Dr [Applause] Jiao good afternoon everybody I'm so thrilled today to receive this year's uh safe 3E technolog research and Innovation award bestowed by US Department of energy MIT Stanford and Texas A&M so first of all I would like to thank Professor Shelly M from University of Chicago who nominated me for this prestigious World otherwise I cannot stand here today uh shery and I um we got to know each other when we were both in graduate school um she has been always so supportive as Bobby mentioned she took a red eye flight yesterday to Boston to support this club and me she even gave me a lipstick this morning to make sure that I look good on camera thank you sherley so much for your always you know continued support and inspiration um I'm also very thankful to uh my husband and my two kids who behave most of time and tolerate me for missing some uh family events because of work I know that's not right I'm not sure if that online and I promise I will correct myself in the future I'm also very very thankful to the tremendous support uh you know from my colleagues and the students so this recognition is not just for myself but for my entire group at pnl and the University of Washington um so I have been supported by US Department of energy since I was uh still a graduate student supervised by Professor Stan Winningham I'm sure some of you are quite familiar with Professor Whittingham uh who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2019 because of his outstanding contributions to lithium arm Battery Technology but my interactions with Professor Stan winingham actually started 20 about 20 years ago when I was still undergraduate student I was you know so brave I read a paper published by him I sent him an email asking some very laive questions about the experiment part and surprisingly he replied my email very quickly with a lot of detailed information about the published paper you know I was not a you know even his student at that moment um and our conversation continued after discussing that paper uh which inspired me to make a very important decision in my life to pursue my PhD degree in Professor winningham's group so that's how I moved to the United States and started my career here so after I got my PhD degree I immediately joined the Pacifica Northwest National Laboratory and was fortunate to become the first post doctor research associate hired by a lab level initiative in energy storage the lab initiative was led by uh Dr junl and Dr Jud verden who later both become my mentors in the lab Dr J verden is now our lab's associate lab director I think uh many of you probably know him very well so during and Jad they have created a very healthy environment for scientists to thrive and that has really benefited many many young scientists including myself so currently um I'm a but he fellow and also lead the battery materials and the systems group at the p&l we have 75 outstanding scientists and Engineers working together to address the scientifical challenges in Clean Energy Technologies that have been broadly applied in many different areas such as electric vehicles great energy storage sensors as well as um Mobile Electronics um so out of this someone ask me how many female scientists in my group so out of this uh 75 staff members 18 are female scientists which is definitely not sufficient so if you're looking for a job in clean energy field do you consider joining us and contact me today this also applies to all the participants online um our energy storage group at the P has a long history and reputation of integrating and validating Innovations at industry relevant skills to make sure what we learn and discover is not just the scientifically interesting but also adaptable for industry applications I believe it's the combination of um Innovation and validation that has made my work impactful and made this a tremendous honor possible I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to um work with our talented col colleagues and the students every day in the lab I look forward to collaborating with the incredible people in this room and in our scientifical Community for clean energy future thank you thank you all [Applause] thanks
2023-10-10 23:01
