Kevin Hale
NYSERDA
Karen Wayland
CEO
GridWise Alliance
Sessions:
Dr. Karen Wayland, CEO of the GridWise Alliance, is a recognized expert in national energy and environmental policy and served in leadership positions at the highest levels of government and nonprofit organizations. Dr. Wayland provides strategic consulting on policy development, coalition building, and communications for major clean energy companies, state and local officials, nonprofits, and foundations, applying her deep substantive policy and government expertise, broad network of relationships across the energy sector, and issue advocacy experience. Wayland served as senior advisor to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and was named by Roll Call magazine as one of Capitol Hill’s top ten energy staffers to know. She also covered energy issues as a Science Fellow in the Office of Senator Harry Reid. She was a senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy, where she established the State, Local and Tribal Policy Office and was Senior Advisor for Domestic Energy Policy to the Deputy Secretary. At DOE, she was part of the leadership team overseeing the Quadrennial Energy Review, a national report on energy infrastructure, and led the development of sections covering modernizing the nation’s electricity grid, consumer value and workforce development. She was the Legislative Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council for five years and chaired the national environmental community’s climate and energy coalition. She also served as Executive Director of the Clean Energy Project, a non-profit that advocated for clean energy policies in Nevada and the West and produced the National Clean Energy Summit. She serves on the board of the Center for Sustainable Energy, is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Boston University Institute of Sustainable Energy, and a Distinguished Associate with Energy Futures Initiative.
