power & renewables summit 2019

Kim is a founding partner of Point Reyes Energy Partners and the former regional head and Vice President at First Solar. She has over 30 years of experience in the power sector having successfully developed and financed over $4.5 billion of power projects. Kim spent over a decade at AES where she successfully led the development and financing of over 600MW of power projects and transacted several M&A transactions. Kim graduated from Williams College and Yale School of Management with an MBA and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies with an MES.

Valerie Hannah is the Chief Operating Officer of TerraForm Power and is responsible for all operations, power marketing and regulatory affairs of the company. She also oversees human resources and information technology.

Ms. Hannah brings deep operating expertise to her role having held a number of leadership positions at Brookfield Renewable, where she helped the company achieve a track record of driving value through growth initiatives, increasing cash flows and mitigating risks. Prior to her current role, Ms. Hannah served as Senior Vice President, Acquisitions & Integrations at Brookfield Renewable with a focus on TerraForm Power. She also served as the Chief Financial Officer, North America at Brookfield Renewable where she was responsible for all capital markets activities including accounting, financial reporting, treasury, and taxation in North America.
Ms. Hannah holds a Graduate Diploma from McGill University (Quebec, Canada) and is a Chartered Accountant.

Laurie has over 15 years of  hands-on wind and solar energy development experience. She most recently lead the North American development team for Lightsource BP.  A 2018  Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy (WRISE) honoree for Project Development, she has built and lead numerous team and has expertise in all aspects of successful energy project development including real estate, interconnection, feasibility analysis, environmental and permitting issues, and contract negotiation. She lead the east coast distributed generation development team for SunEdison and before that was a project developer for numerous wind energy companies.

Mia collaborates with internal and external stakeholder groups to synthesize market insights and guide the prioritization of investments for the development of new market products. MISO’s markets clear more than $37 billion dollars in energy transactions annually. With an evolving fleet, market strategy focuses on what new products are needed to continue to drive non-discriminatory market efficiency and price transparency, aligned with grid reliability, and also send appropriate price signals to guide investment decisions. Prior to MISO, Mia worked at 3M in Corporate Strategy and in Global Sustainability in Corporate R&D on innovating new products to address major world challenges like climate change and water scarcity. Earlier experiences were gained at Gamesa in wind farm development and in management consulting for market strategy for clean tech and renewable energy clients. Mia has a Masters in Sustainability and Environmental Management from Harvard University, an MBA from the University of Minnesota and a B.A. in Communications and Swedish from North Park University.

Cheryl Mele became ERCOT’s senior vice president and chief operating officer (COO) in January 2016. She oversees Grid Operations and Planning, Commercial Operations, and Governance, Risk and Compliance.

Prior to joining ERCOT, Ms. Mele served as deputy general manager and COO for Austin Energy, where she led its power operations, compliance and planning activities.

Ms. Mele brings 30 years of experience in the power industry to ERCOT. Her management and executive roles included both power generation and energy delivery before becoming COO at Austin Energy. Ms. Mele worked for General Electric as both an engineer and system programmer before joining Austin Energy in 1991.

A registered professional engineer in Texas, Ms. Mele has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Union College in Schenectady, New York, and completed The Utility Executive Course at the University of Idaho.

While at Austin Energy, Ms. Mele served on the boards of the South Texas Nuclear Operating Company, the Texas Public Power Association and the RMEL, an electric industry education and networking trade group. She continues to serve as a board member and chair of the Austin Science Education Foundation, where she has been committed to preparing the next generation of scientists and engineers.

Melissa Seymour is Executive Director of Central Region Member Relations and Seams Coordination for the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO). MISO is anindependent, non‐profit organization responsible for maintaining reliable transmission of power in 15 states and the Canadian province of Manitoba. In this role, Ms. Seymour leads a team of customer and regulatory advisors who strive to understand and address the needs and issues of members, stakeholders and state regulators. Additionally, Ms. Seymour’s organization develops and coordinates MISO’s strategy with neighboring transmission system operators, and facilitates new member discussions and integrations.

Ms. Seymour has over 20 years of experience in the energy industry. Prior to joining MISO, Ms. Seymour was the Director of Regional Markets and Regulation at Iberdrola Renewables, LLC, where she was responsible for advancing policy changes to better accommodate renewable energy into the power system and create business opportunities for the company. Before Iberdrola Renewables, she held various strategic planning, business development, and regulatory positions at the Bonneville Power Administration, PacifiCorp, Southstar Energy Services and Southern Company Energy Marketing. Ms. Seymour holds a B.S. in Engineering Science and Mechanics from the University of Tennessee.

Becky Robinson is the Deputy Director of the Division of Economic and Technical Analysis in the Office of Energy Policy and Innovation at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.  In this role, she helps lead a multidisciplinary group of FERC staff that evaluates the functioning of market rules and offers recommendations on potential policy reforms for Commission consideration.

Prior to her current role, she was a Technical Advisor to Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur for almost three years, where she advised on technical wholesale market matters generally, and in particular was responsible at various times for matters in PJM, the California ISO, the Western Interconnect, and the Southwest Power Pool.  Before joining Commissioner LaFleur’s office in June 2015, Ms. Robinson served for five years as an economist in FERC’s Office of Electricity Policy and Innovation, where, in addition to working on a variety of issues in wholesale market design, she focused on revising Commission rules to facilitate the development of interconnection facilities supporting phased generation resources and clarifying the Commission's policy on merchant transmission.  Prior to her time at FERC, she worked as an associate at LECG.

Ms. Robinson received an M.A. in economics from Cambridge University and graduated magna cum laude from Williams College with a double major in mathematics and philosophy.

Melissa is the Director of Policy, Northeast for Cypress Creek Renewables - one of the largest utility and community-scale solar and storage developers in the US. She has over a decade of experience in the renewables market, including extensive government policy, regulatory, and political work, all scales of development experience, and technical expertise. She has experience advocating for and developing solutions on many key topics including ISO wholesale market structures and revenue streams, state RPS structures and REC systems, carbon pricing, compensating distributed clean energy resources based on value, and interconnection processes and standards, as well as experience with siting and property tax issues. She holds a BS from Princeton University.