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What early professional experience shaped your approach to leadership?  

Early in my legal career, I had the extraordinary opportunity to clerk for Judge Betty Fletcher on the Ninth Circuit. She combined intellectual rigor and deep humanity. Our docket spanned everything from immigration to national security to environmental disputes, and she pushed us to confront what our decisions would do in the real world, not just how they read on paper. That discipline still resonates in my work today.   

What professional advice do you wish you’d received earlier in your career?   

Stay somewhere long enough to impact the trajectory of an organization.

Early in my career, I optimized for breadth, moving between grassroots organizing, law practice, government, and corporate roles. That was important exploration to figure out if I was climbing the right hill. In time, I came to the view that depth is what creates real leverage and ability to drive change inside an organization. It simply takes time to gain enough context and credibility to develop true intrapreneurial capability and influence the trajectory of an organization.

What, in your experience, makes it possible for a person to lead with courage and conviction?

Clarity about what you believe and why. And leading in alignment with those values consistently over time, even in the face of opposition. 

What professional accomplishment are you most proud of?

I am proud of building things that shift systems. At the White House, I helped shape permitting reforms across the government that accelerated clean energy deployment. At General Electric, I worked on initiatives that unlocked significant market opportunity. At Galvanize, I built a policy function inside a global investment firm to connect climate capital and policy. In my role at Ceres, I work with investors, corporate leaders, and policy leaders to accelerate the transition to a cleaner, more just, and resilient world. Ultimately, I hope to look back on my career and know that I accelerated the energy transition in a measurable way and built networks and institutions that will outlast me. 

How has your Aspen experience shaped your view of the world? 

Aspen creates space for me to interrogate first principles. It has pushed me beyond short-term business performance metrics toward also considering broader questions about the role of business in society. Aspen also expands my aperture by bringing me into conversation with inspiring leaders outside of the immediate context of my role. That combination reinforces systems-level thinking necessary to do my work helping companies and investors achieve their sustainability goals.

What was the impact of your First Movers seminar on your leadership journey?

Profound. The First Movers experience created space to step out of execution mode and reflect. It helped me build a trusted group of peer mentors to work through leadership challenges together, and it enabled me to drive impact inside my organization and beyond.

During the Fellowship, I was working at General Electric as the executive leader of our environmental policy work. My Fellowship project focused on shaping public policy to support the growth of additive manufacturing. At the time, GE was beginning to use additive manufacturing techniques to build a new commercial jet engine that promised to burn less fuel than existing engines and release fewer emissions, and other manufacturers had similarly ambitious plans. But the policy and regulatory environment hadn’t yet caught up with the pace of innovation. I convened key players to address this gap and to support policies to enable the growth of this potentially transformative technology. 

None of this was part of my day job. The Fellowship gave me the space to work on it and taught me that, with the right support, you don’t have to wait for your job title to change to drive impact where it’s needed most.