GreenBeat 2009: Politics and Policy

Robert Gee

Robert Gee is President and Founder of the Gee Strategies Group LLC, a consulting firm providing policy analysis, advocacy, and litigation support services for the energy, electric utility and critical infrastructure industries based in Washington, D.C. His diverse client base includes investors, trade associations, utilities, and public sector institutions. He has a thirty-year record of achievement as a seasoned Washington and Texas-based senior public official, attorney, and executive performing complex assignments involving major energy and telecommunications issues at the state, national, and international level. He has testified numerous times before the United States Congress, and quoted by news media, including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, National Journal, Energy News Live and CNBC television. His editorials have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News, and the Houston Chronicle. Robert Gee served as Vice President for Development and Partner Relations for the Electricity Innovation Institute (E2I), an affiliate of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), where he advocated development of the “smart grid” to digitize the electric utility power delivery system. From 1997 to 2000 he served as Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs and as Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy of the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. He chaired the Energy Department’s Central Asia/Caspian energy strategy, and was responsible for the timely completion of the Department’s 1998 Comprehensive National Energy Strategy. He also oversaw the operation of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and the national research program to develop and demonstrate advanced clean coal, natural gas, and petroleum technologies. From 1991 until 1997 he served on the Public Utility Commission of Texas and as its Chairman from 1991 through 1995. During his service, he chaired the Committee on Electricity for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. He has served as an Attorney Advisor at the Interstate Commerce Commission and as a Supervisory Trial Attorney at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He held the position of General Attorney at Tenneco Oil Company, and was Of Counsel to the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. Mr. Gee received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in government with honors from the University of Texas and a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from the University of Texas School of Law. He currently serves on the board of the Northeast-Midwest Institute. He is also a member of the Committee of 100. His past affiliations included serving as a trustee for St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, and as a member of the Dallas Regional Panel of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships.

Katherine Hamilton

Katherine Hamilton joined the GridWise Alliance in October of 2008 as its first full time President. In her tenure, Katherine Hamilton has watched the Alliance membership grow from 70 to over 100 members. In addition to new members, Katherine Hamilton has brokered numerous strategic alliances with key stakeholder groups. Katherine Hamilton has also been instrumental in spearheading the legislative and policy efforts of the Alliance in the past year including developing legislative language and providing testimony for Congress. In addition to her activities to promote the many different initiatives of the Alliance, Katherine Hamilton has participated in numerous conferences as a keynote speaker and on smart grid panels. Prior to joining the GridWise Alliance, Katherine Hamilton was policy advisor for Good Energies, Inc., a private investment company with a current portfolio in clean energy technologies of more than $6 Billion. In addition, Katherine Hamilton co-directed the American Bioenergy Association, where she worked with entrepreneurs, universities and utilities in developing biomass technologies. As the President of her own company, The Hamilton Group, she worked with the Union of Concerned Scientists, Natural Resources Defense Council, Midwest Research Institute and other organizations to lobby Congress and statehouses on various clean energy policies and funding. Katherine Hamilton also worked for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) where she created several programs including federal energy audit and water conservation. Katherine Hamilton also served as NREL’s Manager of Government Relations in Washington, DC, becoming an expert witness on renewable energy for the House Committee on Science and serving as an advisor to Vice President Cheney’s Task Force in developing the national energy plan. Katherine Hamilton apprenticed as a distribution engineer for Virginia Power (now Dominion Energy) and was a senior analyst in commercial energy efficiency. Katherine Hamilton holds degrees from Cornell University and the University of Paris, Sorbonne.

Michael Kanellos

Michael Kanellos is the Editor in Chief at Greentech Media, where he covers emerging technologies and companies in the green world. Prior to joining the company in 2008, he worked for CNET Network's News.com for eleven years. Among other jobs at CNET, he launched the company's push into clean technology.

He has appeared on NPR, CBS, CNBC, Fox News and other media outlets and has spoken at CES, the Japan Business Strategy Summit, Ceatec, the Irish Software Association, Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, the Flash Memory Summit and Clean Energy Venture Summit.

A graduate of Cornell University and the University of California (Hastings), he has worked as an attorney, a travel writer and a busboy at a pancake house.

Pamela Lesh

Pamela Lesh offers consulting in business and regulatory strategy and systems approaches to opportunity creation and problem solving through her company, Graceful Systems LLC. She recently completed work as a Senior Advisor to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), on loan to that organization from Portland General Electric (PGE), for which she was Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Strategic Planning. At NRDC, she worked on national energy policy issues of importance to electric utilities, including a major review of the results of decoupling policies nationwide. This work supported her focus for the last few years on transforming the means by which United States residents and businesses apply energy to meet personal and economic needs to ones that are sustainable for the country and the world, and ensuring that the current U.S. electric utilities have an opportunity to be full and willing partners in this transformation. She will continue with that focus through Graceful Systems. Pamela Lesh has worked in the electric utility industry for over 20 years. During this time, her responsibilities included management of all aspects of state and federal economic regulation, resource planning, federal legislative affairs, and corporate communications. Economic regulation spans matters from rate setting to approval of mergers and acquisitions to tariff design. Pamela Lesh also managed strategy development for PGE. She specializes in perceiving the context within which a business or regulatory strategy will exist and developing multiple paths to the objective, and excels at written and oral communication of the ideas, paths, and strategies so developed. Pamela Lesh holds a B.S. from Washington State University and a J.D. from The University of Washington School of Law. She has authored articles on integrated resource planning, decoupling and deregulation and spoken at numerous conferences on regulatory policy and utility strategy. Pamela Lesh also serves as a Board member for the Volunteers of America of Oregon and the Portland State University Institute of Metropolitan Studies.

Matt Marshall

Matt Marshall is the editor and CEO of VentureBeat, which he founded in 2006. He covered the venture capital and startup beat for the Mercury News from 2001-2006. Marshall significantly expanded the newspapers coverage of venture capital and startups during that time, in daily articles and a weekly column called the VC Insider, and then online with his blog SiliconBeat from 2004.

Marshall was awarded Journalist of the Year by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists in 2002, and the James Madison Freedom of Information award in 2003. These awards were for a series of articles he wrote in conjunction with two successful Mercury News lawsuits, in part instigated by Marshall, against California's public pension fund (CalPERS) and the University of California. The lawsuits sought disclosure of the financial performance of venture capital and other private equity funds that CalPERS and UC had invested in, arguing that state taxpayers and retirees had a right to know these results. As a result of these laws suits, public employees now have full access to information on the performance of their retirement investments.

Marshall was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 through 1998. In 1999 he wrote a book while in Germany, The Bank: the Birth of Europe's Central Bank and the Rebirth of European Power. He has also written for the Washington Post and several other publications. Marshal is also the executive producer of DEMO.

Marshall has a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University.