Mark Baldassare is survey director at the Public Policy Institute of California, where he holds the Arjay and Frances Fearing Miller Chair in Public Policy. From 2007 to 2022, he also served as president and CEO of PPIC. Prior to that, he served as PPIC’s director of research. He is a leading expert on public opinion and survey methodology, and has directed the PPIC Statewide Survey since 1998. He is an authority on elections, voter behavior, and political and fiscal reform, authoring ten books and numerous reports on these topics. He often provides testimony before legislative committees and state commissions. Before joining PPIC, he was a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of California, Irvine, where he held the Johnson Chair in Civic Governance. He has conducted surveys for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the California Business Roundtable. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Ross Brown is chief deputy legislative analyst at California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO). In 15 years at the LAO, he has been an analyst in a variety of policy areas, including an eight-year stint as energy and climate change analyst. He now oversees K–12, higher education, public safety, environment, and transportation issues. He holds a PhD and MS from the University of Minnesota and a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Tani Cantil-Sakauye is president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California, where she holds the Walter and Esther Hewlett Chair in Understanding California’s Future. From 2011 to 2022, she served as the 28th Chief Justice of California and led the judiciary as the chair of the Judicial Council—the constitutional policy and rule making body of the judicial branch—the first person of color and the second woman to do so. Before she was elected statewide as the Chief Justice of California, she served more than 20 years on California appellate and trial courts and was appointed or elevated to higher office by three governors. Earlier in her career she served as a deputy district attorney for the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office and on the senior staff of Governor Deukmejian, first as deputy legal affairs secretary and later as a deputy legislative secretary. Currently she is also an associate professor at the University of Virginia, and a board member for the University of California Center for Students, the Kaiser Arbitration Oversight Board, and the Alliance of Retired Chief Justices. She holds a BA and a JD from the University of California, Davis.

Lorena Gonzalez is president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO—the first woman and first person of color to be elected to the post. Under her leadership, the Federation has built a stronger, more accessible labor movement through prioritizing all forms of organizing and building solidarity across unions. She has dedicated her career to expanding workers’ rights through organizing, politics, and legislation. From transforming the San Diego region as head of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, to passing landmark labor laws in the State Assembly, to her historic leadership of the California Federation of Labor Unions, she has relentlessly championed the cause of the working class.  Her efforts have achieved groundbreaking advances for millions of working Californians—including paid sick leave for all employees, overtime pay for farmworkers, and the strongest laws in the nation against worker misclassification and wage theft. She has revived the member-to-member political program to build engagement and power for all union families. These historic victories established California at the forefront of labor policy and set a national agenda on workers’ rights. As both a legislator and labor leader, she has been a leader in tackling emerging technology in the workplace, including creating protections against dangerous warehouse production quotas at Amazon and leading the fight to establish guardrails for the use of AI. She currently serves as the national co-chair of AFL-CIO State Federation AI Task Force and on the Public Policy Institute of California’s Statewide Leadership Council. She is a graduate of Stanford University and earned a master’s degree from Georgetown University and a law degree from UCLA.

Yana Garcia was appointed California secretary for environmental protection by Governor Gavin Newsom in August 2022. Secretary Garcia oversees the state’s efforts to fight climate change, protect air and water quality, regulate pesticides and toxic substances, achieve the state’s recycling and waste reduction goals, and advance environmental justice. As a member of the governor’s cabinet, she also advises the governor on environmental policy. Since 2021, she has served as special assistant attorney general, advising California Attorney General Rob Bonta on the California Department of Justice’s legal and policy matters pertaining to the environment, land law, and natural resources including climate, transportation, energy, and housing. She was deputy secretary for environmental justice, Tribal affairs and border relations at CalEPA from 2019 to 2021 and was CalEPA’s assistant secretary for environmental justice and Tribal affairs from 2017 to 2019. Prior to her state service, Secretary Garcia was an attorney at Earthjustice in the California regional office in San Francisco. She was also a staff attorney at Communities for a Better Environment. She holds a degree in politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a law degree from Northeastern University School of Law.

Kate Gordon is CEO of CA FWD, a statewide organization dedicated to a more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive economy across every region of the state. She has spent the past two decades working at the intersection of climate change, energy policy, and equitable economic development. Most recently, she served as senior advisor to US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, in which role she led a variety of locally focused initiatives to help drive a sustainable and resilient energy transition, including creating the Community Benefits Plan framework for Department of Energy (DOE) funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, and driving the agency’s efforts to site clean energy projects on DOE lands through the Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative. Prior to her time in the Biden administration, she served for several years as director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research and senior climate policy advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom. In this role, she launched or led several initiatives to better integrate climate and economic development strategy across the state. Before entering public service, she was the founding director of the Risky Business Project, focused on quantifying and communicating the financial risks and economic impacts of climate change on key US regions and sectors. She serves on multiple boards, including for Brown Advisory and Element Resources, as well as PPIC’s Statewide Leadership Council. She teaches a course on the intersection of climate, politics, finance, and infrastructure at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a nonresident scholar at Carnegie California. She earned a JD and a master’s degree in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and an undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University.

Siva Gunda is a commissioner on the California Energy Commission (CEC), serving as the commission’s public member and vice chair. He is the lead commissioner on energy assessments. Previously he served as manager of the Demand Analysis Office and deputy director for the Energy Commission’s Energy Assessments Division, which forecasts and assesses energy demands and supplies. Before joining the CEC, he served in a variety of capacities at the Energy Efficiency Institute at the University of California, Davis, including as the director of research, where he directed the institute’s operations and research portfolio. He holds an MS degree in mechanical and aeronautical engineering from Utah State University.

Lance Hastings is president and CEO of the California Manufacturers & Technology Association (CMTA). Under his leadership, CMTA passed historic legislation to provide a Manufacturing Investment Credit for manufacturing equipment with a broad, bipartisan support. Before joining CMTA, he served as MillerCoors’s vice president of national affairs. Previously, he was the vice president of government relations at the California Grocers Association and senior director for state affairs at the Grocery Manufacturers of America. He also served as legislative staff in the California State Legislature for almost a decade. He has served on the board of directors of the Sacramento State Alumni Association, the Sacramento State University Foundation, the Red Cross Sierra-Delta Chapter, the Los Angeles County Business Federation, and the Food Industry Association Executives. In addition to being on the PPIC Economic Policy Center Advisory Council, he also has served on the advisory boards of the California Association for Local Economic Development and was appointed to the California Future of Work Commission by Governor Newsom. He earned his BA in economics and a minor in government, and has an MBA from California State University, Sacramento.

Laura Klivans is an award-winning climate reporter for KQED News, where she covers climate change. She is the former host of Deep Look, KQED’s video series. Her work reaches national audiences through NPR, Here & Now, PRI, and other major outlets. She has won five Northern California Area Emmy Awards and first place in the Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards. In the past, she taught audio storytelling at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, led international education programs, worked with immigrants and refugees along the Thai-Burmese border, taught high schoolers sex education, and worked as an actress. She is a former UC Berkeley Human Rights Fellow, University of Southern California Center for Health Journalism’s California Fellow and Coro Fellow in Public Affairs. She has master’s degrees in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley and in education from Harvard University, and an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University.

Graham Knaus is CEO for the California State Association of Counties (CSAC) and the California Counties Foundation, representing California’s 58 counties and their 296 elected supervisors. Prior to his current role, he was the deputy executive director of operations and member services for CSAC. In this role he was responsible for operations, communications, and strategic planning. During this time, he also served as CEO of the California Counties Foundation, where he had previously been a faculty member for several years. The California Counties Foundation oversees the CSAC’s nationally recognized leadership and policy development and the CSAC Grants Initiative, which supports counties in maximizing state and federal funding. He has spent his career working for California counties, including six years with Placer County as the county’s assistant director of Health and Human Services and as the county budget director. Prior to that, he served as a senior fiscal and policy analyst for the County Welfare Directors Association and as a legislative advocate for a firm representing California counties. While in these roles, he was a primary strategic advisor on the 2013 Health Realignment, which implemented the Affordable Care Act; he was also a principal architect on the 2011 State Public Safety Realignment, which realigned $6 billion of services and funding from the state to counties. In addition to his CSAC role, he serves as vice president of the CSAC finance corporation board and is the 2026 president of the National Council of County Association Executives. He also sits on the board of Easy Smart Pay, an online platform to facilitate property tax and other public payments; the National Association of Counties (NACo) board; the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy (CFEE); as well as a variety of nonprofit boards, including the Public Policy Institute of California’s Statewide Leadership Council. He received his BA degree in political science/public policy from UC San Diego, and his MPA from the University of Southern California.

Ana J. Matosantos is a managing director and partner with Boston Consulting Group. Previously, she served as cabinet secretary in the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom and before that she was a budget and policy consultant, focusing primarily on issues relating to the state budget, education finance, health care, income inequality, and local government. She served as director of the California Department of Finance in both the Brown and Schwarzenegger administrations, helping the state deal with the impact of the Great Recession. She was Governor Brown’s chief fiscal advisor as the state closed a $27 billion shortfall and transitioned from years of recurring budget deficits to multibillion dollar surpluses. She played a key role in the enactment of California’s new school financing and accountability system, the state’s financing and implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and the implementation of corrections realignment. Before joining the California Department of Finance in 2008, she served as deputy legislative secretary for Health and Human Services and Veterans Affairs in the Office of the Governor, working on the administration’s comprehensive health care reform proposal. She was a member of the Health and Human Services Agency staff from 2004 to 2007, serving as assistant secretary for programs and fiscal affairs as well as associate secretary for legislative affairs. Prior to her executive branch service, she worked in the state senate as a consultant to the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services and as the human services consultant of the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review. In August 2016, she was appointed by President Obama to serve on the seven member Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board, charged with working with the government of Puerto Rico to achieve structural budget balance, restructure massive debts and obligations, and rebuild opportunity for the people of Puerto Rico after a decade of economic contraction and population decline. She serves on the Public Policy Institute of California’s board of directors; previously she was a member of PPIC’s Statewide Leadership Council. She holds a bachelor’s degree with a major in political science from Stanford University.

Michael Méndez is an associate professor of environmental policy and planning and Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of California, Irvine, and visiting scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (through a National Science Foundation Early Faculty Career Award). He was previously the Pinchot Faculty Fellow at the Yale School of the Environment. His first book Climate Change from the Streets, published through Yale University Press (2020) was the winner of the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award, sponsored by the International Studies Association and the Association for Humanist Sociology’s Betty and Alfred McClung Lee Award. In 2022, he was awarded the Carnegie Fellowship. He has more than a decade of senior-level experience in the public and private sectors, where he consulted and actively engaged in the policymaking process. This included working for the California Legislature as a senior consultant, lobbyist, member of the California State Mining & Geology Board, and as vice-chair of the Sacramento City Planning Commission. In 2021, Governor Newsom appointed him to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board. In 2023, he was appointed to serve on the National Advisory Council of FEMA. He currently serves on the Public Policy Institute of California’s board of directors and the PPIC Higher Education Advisory Council.

Ivan Penn is an energy correspondent for The New York Times, based in Los Angeles. Prior to his role at the Times, he reported for The Miami Herald, The Baltimore Sun, The St. Petersburg/Tampa Bay Times and The Los Angeles Times, covering local and state governments and criminal justice. Among his numerous honors, he was twice a finalist and a one-time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award, the highest honor in business journalism, administered by the University of California, Los Angeles Anderson School of Management. His career began in 1992, after earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park. He holds a master’s degree in global leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary and was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University.

Alice Reynolds is president of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and CPUC commissioner. Prior to her appointment, she served for three years as Governor Newsom’s senior advisor for energy. She also served in the administration of Governor Brown, most recently as senior advisor for climate, the environment, and energy; and previously as chief counsel and deputy secretary for law enforcement at the California Environmental Protection Agency. During her time at CalEPA, she led the creation of the agency’s environmental justice task force and refinery safety task force. She began her public service career as a deputy attorney general in the California Attorney General’s Office, where she litigated cases involving protection of public trust lands, coastal resources, and public access, and other environmental issues. Prior to entering public service, she was a lawyer in private practice in San Francisco. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a JD from Santa Clara University School of Law.

Rod Robinson is vice president of Electric Systems Operations at Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), bringing decades of leadership and operational expertise to the role. A US Air Force veteran, he launched his energy career at PG&E in 2002, before advancing through key leadership positions at CAISO and PG&E, where he has been instrumental in strengthening grid reliability and emergency preparedness. He returned to PG&E in 2012 as a Transmission Grid Control Center supervisor and has served in a number of roles, including manager and senior manager, director of Transmission Grid Operations, interim senior director of Emergency Preparedness and Response, and most recently, senior director of Transmission System Operations. He holds an AS in electronics technology from the Community College of the Air Force, a BA in business management from the University of Phoenix, and an MBA from St. Mary’s College.

Nora Sheriff is a member of the Energy & Natural Resources Practice Group in Buchalter law firm. With decades of experience in the energy industry, she focuses her practice on electric and natural gas regulatory and administrative litigation, legislative efforts, and end-use contractual transactions; she works to ensure clean energy tools are available for large end-use customer use to help mitigate the impacts of the high cost of California power on California manufacturing and avoid carbon emissions leakage by keeping manufacturing in California. Her clients include oil and gas energy companies working to advance a lower-carbon future, municipal utilities, cities, water agencies, and renewable energy systems developers. She represents large power customers and clean power stakeholders, informs and helps shape California’s energy policy debates, and advocates for clean energy and large end-user ratepayer interests. In 2025, she was recognized as one of the San Francisco Business Times’ Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business.

Adria Tinnin is the director of Race Equity Policy for The Utility Reform Network (TURN). She examines TURN’s policies, practices, and positions on utility-consumer advocacy work to eradicate structural and/or institutional racism that exists in utility regulatory practice and ultimately improve energy and telecommunications outcomes for Black, indigenous, and people of color. Before coming to TURN, she was a researcher and lecturer in the political science department at the University of California, Los Angeles, teaching courses in American politics and environmental justice politics. Her research focused on inequities in regulatory enforcement in low-income communities and communities of color. She also worked as a political risk analyst for GeoQuant, a geopolitical risk analysis firm. She earned a BA, MA, and PhD in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Andy Walz is president of downstream, midstream, and chemicals for Chevron. He is responsible for Chevron’s worldwide manufacturing, marketing, lubricants, chemicals, and additives businesses, along with Chevron’s shipping, pipeline, power, and trading units. In 2020 Chevron established the renewables business unit to commercialize lower-carbon products, including renewable/compressed natural gas, hydrogen, and sustainable aviation fuel, and necessary infrastructure development. In 2022 the Chevron REG business unit was established under Americas products, responsible for feedstock aggregation, renewable manufacturing, and marketing lower-carbon fuels. Previously, he served as the president of international products, responsible for Chevron’s downstream fuels business and joint ventures outside of the Americas. He oversaw the refining and marketing of transportation fuels in key distributive areas in Southeast Asia and South Africa, as well as Chevron’s joint-venture aviation activities in the Middle East. He earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering at Colorado State University.

Peter Weber is a former Fortune 500 executive who has been at the helm of some of the world’s leading technology, manufacturing, and agricultural science companies. He served as vice president of FMC Corporation, CEO of Teknowledge, Inc., and CEO of Riverbend International. In 2010, he launched the Fresno Bridge Academy, a program designed to bring Fresno’s poorest residents into the economic mainstream; the project has expanded into other counties as the California Bridge Academies. He currently serves as a senior advisor to the New California Coalition and the Stanford Lab for Deliberative Democracy. He formerly served on the board of the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley, the Center for Advanced Research and Technology, the Fresno Business Council, the Fresno Citizen Corp, the Fresno Regional Jobs Initiative, and the Stanford Institute for Manufacturing and Automation. He has a BA in industrial engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and is a graduate of the executive program at the Stanford University Business School.