Barbara O’Neill is the Grid Integration Manager at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and a representative for the Global Power Sector Transformation consortium. She leads projects and engages stakeholders to provide information on renewable energy integration practices, policies, regulations, and technologies. She has worked in such places as Chile, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Morocco, Chad, Kazakhstan, Guyana, Vietnam, Mexico, Peru, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, India, USVI, and Colombia. Domestically, she participates in the U.S. DOE National Transmission Planning analysis. Before NREL, she was Director at EDF Renewable Energy, where her team developed utility-scale wind and solar projects. Previously, she worked at Xcel Energy in Resource Planning where she negotiated hundreds of megawatts of renewable energy power purchase agreements, performed integrated resource planning, and optimized dispatch models. Mrs. O’Neill holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from Pratt Institute, an M.S. in energy management and policy from University of Pennsylvania, and a Diplôme d’Ingénieur in petroleum economics and management from the Institut Français du Pétrole.
Caroline Otonglo is a Senior Infrastructure Finance Specialist at the World Bank Group, based at the Washington DC headquarters. Her role is to support the Bank’s clients in developing climate-smart infrastructure assets across various sectors through financial structuring, credit enhancement and technical assistance, so as to crowd-in infrastructure financing on optimal terms. She has 20 years’ experience in project finance, corporate finance, equity investment and corporate governance; spanning origination, structuring, execution and closing of transactions, in which she has deployed debt, equity and technical assistance across various sectors in various emerging markets. She is a lawyer, accountant and corporate secretary, by training.
A Statistician-Economist by training, Joseph Mouanda has worked with the Independent Development Evaluation (IDEV) of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) for almost 22 years. Joseph holds the position of Chief Evaluation Officer. Joseph conducts sector, thematic, impact evaluations, and project performance evaluations of AfDB-funded Infrastructure (energy, transport, and water supply & sanitation). He also carried out synthesis evaluation on private sector development as well as corporate evaluations. Joseph also worked in evaluation capacity development and knowledge management. His most recent completed evaluation was on the evaluation of the AfDB’s Support for Renewable Energy (2012-2021). Prior to joining IDEV/AfDB, Joseph worked for six years as long-term consultant in the public ministries of Côte d’Ivoire in the education and vocational training sector, mainly with the statistics, planning, and evaluation department. He also worked as a lecturer at the National School of Statistics and Applied Economics (ENSEA) of Abidjan. Joseph holds an M.Sc. in Statistics and Applied Economics and has also trained in development evaluation, including through the International Program for Development Evaluation Training (IPDET). He is also a Certified Knowledge Manager and serves as a co-instructor during the 2023 IPDET Onsite Program.
Lori Bird is Director of WRI’s U.S. Energy Program and the Polsky Chair for Renewable Energy. In this role, she leads a team of more than 20 specialists who work with utilities, cities and other large energy users to decarbonize the electric sector and accelerate transportation electrification. The team works to advance equitable access to clean energy, accelerate renewable energy and electric vehicle deployment, identify policy pathways to deep decarbonization, ensure wholesale power markets enable the transition to clean energy and facilitate innovative customer and utility clean energy solutions.
Prior to joining WRI, she served as a principal analyst in the Markets and Policy Group of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), where she worked on clean energy policy, renewable energy grid integration, solar programs for low-income customers and green power markets. At NREL, she helped launch the Solar Energy Innovation Network, an $11 million, multi-year program designed to advance cutting-edge solutions to expand solar adoption. She led or co-authored studies on the benefits and costs of renewable electricity standards and approaches to addressing the variability of renewables. She has also provided testimony and technical assistance to state agencies and international clients on clean energy policy and deployment.
Over her career, she has co-authored nearly 150 publications on clean energy, including articles in academic and trade journals, such as Energy Policy, the Electricity Journal, Climate Policy, Energy & Environment and Public Utilities Fortnightly. She was also a contributing author to the IPCC Special Report on Renewables. She has been quoted or had her work cited in major media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, NPR, the New York Times, USA Today, and Business Week. In 2020, she was the recipient of the American Solar Energy Society’s award for Leadership in Solar Policy and Market Transformation and, earlier, received the NREL Chairman’s award and two President’s awards for her sustained contributions on clean energy markets.
Earlier in her career, she worked for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and for Hagler Bailly Consulting. She holds a master's degree in environmental studies from Yale University’s School of the Environment and a B.A. in economics and environmental studies from Indiana University. She lives in a home featuring solar panels and passive solar design with her husband and two children in Boulder, CO and has owned an electric vehicle since 2015.
Jimmy joined the Climate Investment Funds in 2019. He leads the Scaling Up Renewable Energy Program in Low Income Countries (SREP) and is Co-lead of the Renewable Energy Integration Program.
Specializing in energy at the World Bank since 1996, Jimmy has extensive experience working in international development and program management in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East. Jimmy’s specialization in infrastructure and policy projects in complex and challenging environments adds to his considerable expertise. In his prior role, Jimmy also served as the World Bank’s Operations Officer in the Caribbean Country Management Unit. Jimmy has a Master’s degree in Engineering Project Management from the University of Maryland.