Board Bios
James Tuleya has lived in Sunnyvale since 1999 when he became a marketing and alliances manager at Silicon Graphics after his early career spanned roles including Navy officer, operations consultant, investment researcher, and international market development consultant. After having worked for eight years on energy efficiency programs and regulatory affairs at PG&E, James currently is the Community Programs Director for the HomeIntel energy savings program offered by Home Energy Analytics.
Over 10 years ago, James began active climate advocacy and switched his career focus from high-tech to clean-tech/energy efficiency after Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth documentary helped him realize the urgent need to address our Climate Crisis. He has a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Stanford and an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Leader of clean energy community initiatives, avid organic gardener and cook, Stanford sports enthusiast and electric vehicle owner. James can be seen all over Silicon Valley happily driving and talking about his new Bolt EV.
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Bruce Karney is a retired marketing professional, and has lived in Mountain View since 1981. In 2007 he led a city-wide group of 119 homeowners who purchased solar panels at a 35% discount. He subsequently joined SolarCity when it was a small startup to lead group purchasing programs in other cities. In 2008 he was Chair of Mountain View's Environmental Sustainability Task Force, a group whose recommendations provided the basis for the City's current Sustainability Action Plans.
Bruce retired in 2012 and is now an environmental activist and solar PV consultant. He has a BS in Mathematical Sciences from Stanford and an MS in Management Science from UC Berkeley. He is also a graduate of Leadership Mountain View and Acterra's "Be the Change" programs.
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Diane Bailey is a climate and clean air advocate with a background in environmental science. She comes from the Natural Resources Defense Council, where she spent almost 14 years working at the local, state, federal and international level promoting improved air quality and public health through reduced fossil fuel use, advances in clean transportation, and pollution prevention in industry. Previously, Diane worked at Citizens for a Better Environment in Chicago and a local transportation planning agency in Houston. She holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Washington University and a master’s degree in environmental engineering from Rice University.
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Bruce Naegel's career started in the biomedical industry. He moved to Computer Data Storage (hardware and software) where he held positions in program and product management. As part of releasing award-winning products, He spoke at industry conferences and published articles in trade publications. He also led a standards committee group on measuring performance. His passion for sustainability was ignited by a news article which stated it would cost half a billion dollars to resettle an Alaskan village with about 2000 people threatened with sea level rise. He then found some like-minded people at Veritas Symantec. Some of them realized that Veritas software can be configured to save energy in a data center. This effort yielded an energy ROI program, industry conference presentations, and a sales campaign yielding seven and eight figure software deals. Three years ago, he joined Sustainable Silicon Valley. In the last year his focus was in Metrics and Research. That included numerous blog articles and a set of industry publications on visualizing the drought. He is part of a team working to bring energy efficiency to a disadvantaged community.
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Gary Latshaw energetically promotes scientifically valid environmental solutions. As a graduate of Stanford, where he received his doctorate in physics, he has been following the findings of climate scientists closely. He is deeply concerned that many of our “old” habits relating to energy, agriculture, construction, transportation, and other endeavors are no longer compatible with preserving a healthy environment for our children. In promoting new and environmentally friendly technologies he has become a board member of the Loma Prieta Chapter of the Sierra Club, and Carbon Free Mountain View. He is also an active member of Citizens Climate Lobby, 350.org, Cupertino Rotary, Climate Reality and the Electric Auto Association of Silicon Valley. As a member of Climate Reality (which was founded by Al Gore to inform the public on environmental issues) he has given over 50 presentations on climate change. He also frequently writes letters to the editor on environmental issues.
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Steve Schmidt was a climate change "denier" until a very patient environmental scientist took the time to explain the fundamentals (particularly ocean acidification) and expertly dismantled Steve's long-held beliefs over the course of a 10 day trip together. That was in 2005. Since then he's been focused on reducing GHG emissions, both personally and for others. This has included building an electric vehicle with his son, founding HEA.com to simplify residential energy efficiency, dragging his wife Lisa around the US in a WVO-powered RV, and learning as much as he can about EVs, renewable energy, biofuels, carbon budgets, heat pumps, CCS, GHG inventories and related topics. Steve has engineering and business degrees from Stanford and is a resident of Los Altos Hills, where he was responsible for the town's annual GHG inventories and Climate Action Plans from 2005 to 2016.
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Bruce Hodge is an environmental activist, fine art photographer, and computer scientist. He’s spent most of his computer science career at Adobe Systems, where he currently works on a team that writes drawing apps for iPads and iPhones. As a photographer he attempts to use the form, texture, and colors of the landscape to make photographs that are often abstract or not easily recognizable. Bruce counts himself as a life-long environmentalist, with his first concerns about climate change surfacing in about 1985. Since about 2006, Bruce has concentrated on getting Palo Alto to implement cutting edge environmental policies, while keeping a close eye on many aspects of climate change in general. He founded Carbon Free Palo Alto in 2011 and played a crucial role in convincing the City of Palo Alto to provide carbon neutral electricity to all customers. Since then, he’s worked to keep Palo Alto in the vanguard of cities striving to implement a low-carbon energy future by focusing on strategies such as community solar and environmentally beneficial electrification. Bruce received a BS in Mathematics from the University of Georgia.
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Tom Kabat started a career in solar energy and efficiency 40 years ago because he thought there wasn’t enough fossil fuel to meet humanities’ needs. Now he knows there is 3 times more than the environment can handle and we must transition to cleaner ways as fast as possible. He started as a Solar Engineer for Palo Alto’s utilities and performed efficiency planning, power resource planning, integrated resource planning and helped transition the utility out of the energy crisis and into 100% carbon neutral electricity. He ran RFPs for power contracts and negotiated the lowest cost, most flexible Solar PPA of its time. After studying environmental engineering at Cal Poly and earning his license in mechanical engineering he still consults to DOE and DOI helping to manage large federal hydropower facilities in California. Among his many sustainability related hobbies, he serves on the board of Sunwork.org offering low cost solar to customers who need lower prices, and teaching bike repair to Stanford engineering students at Repair Café Palo Alto.
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Bret Andersen is a consultant and activist who develops and promotes innovative, scalable policy and program solutions to meet the vast challenge of climate change while creating more just and flourishing communities. He is currently a member of Carbon Free Palo Alto. Bret has over 25 years of strategy, business development, acquisitions, alliances and marketing experience in the technology industry including senior management positions at HP and Philips electronics in Europe and the U.S. and as a consultant to start-up companies and non-profits. He has led a number of sustainability related projects including street level carbon footprint reduction, cleantech startup financing, alternative commuting and environmental education. Bret has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota and an MBA from Stanford Business School.
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Serena Zhao is a chaos wrangler, with 19+ years of program management experience driving cross-functional programs for Adobe’s central cyber security team. Serena works to raise awareness on how we can reduce carbon emissions in order to reduce the impacts of climate change through personal and systemic change by through Adobe's Sustainability Action Team. She hosts a monthly Sustainability “GreenBag” and organizes other other sustainability-focused events introducing topics such as 100% electrification, fossil free investing, sustainable urban design, etc in order to change hearts and minds. Long-time San Jose resident and mother of 2, Serena is also a member of Climate ChangeMakers, 350 Silicon Valley, and Climate Reality Santa Clara. Serena holds a BS in Cognitive Science from the University of California, Berkeley and an MS in Computer Science from San Jose State University. She also is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), Sustainability Excellence Professional (SEP), and SANS Security Awareness Professional (SSAP).
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