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Rachel Coyne is the executive chief of staff at Texas RE, where she oversees cross-departmental projects and manages the Reliability Standards program. Before coming to Texas RE she worked on the enforcement team at the Western Electric Coordinating Council (WECC). Rachel has a B.A. in economics from Rhodes College. |
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Blair Giffin is the manager of O&P Compliance at Texas RE. He joined the company in 2022 as an operations and planning compliance engineer with over 18 years of electric industry experience, having worked for MISO, SPP, LCRA, and Nextera Energy. Blair holds a BSEE from Louisiana State University and is a NERC certified Reliability Coordinator. |
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David Kezell is director of weatherization and inspection at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). Over the last ten years he has also worked in Senior Director and Director roles at CPS Energy and Seminole Electric Cooperative in Tampa, Florida respectively. Previously he worked with WorleyParsons (now Worley) in several roles including Project Manager, Director of Construction Management, and General Manager of Chattanooga Operations. Earlier in his career he worked for an independent power producer and consulting engineering firms in the San Francisco Bay area. While there he helped to develop and execute new power projects and worked as an air quality compliance consultant. He is a graduate of The Pennsylvania State University and Arizona State University and is a licensed Mechanical Engineer in California. |
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Therese Harris is the director of the infrastructure division at the Public Utility Commission of Texas. In this role she works closely with division's mapping, infrastructure analysis, and engineer managers to oversee work on infrastructure planning, operations, reliability and resiliency, and mapping issues that affect electric and water utilities. Her perview includes the PUCT's contract to analyze and review electric entities' emergency operations plans and reports on electric entity weather emergency preparedness. Additionally she contributes to the state's electricity supply chain map required by the Texas Senate. Therese holds a master of arts degree in mineral resources from the Cockrell School of Engineering and a bachelor of science degree in geology from the University of Texas at Austin. |
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Kiel Lyons is a senior manager in the compliance assurance and certification group at NERC. In this position he manages operations, planning, cyber, and physical security technical subject matter experts responsible for ERO Enterprise compliance monitoring and certification programs. The compliance assurance and certification group’s primary focus is to provide oversight, guidance, and coordination in managing programs and processes to monitor, review, and evaluate the ERO Enterprise implementation of risk-based compliance monitoring and certification in support of BES reliability and security. Prior to joining NERC, Kiel worked as an electrical engineer in the Office of Electric Reliability at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Kiel holds his BSEE from Geneva College in Pennsylvania. |
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Chris Coleman is ERCOT's has been ERCOT's chief meteorologist since 2012. Prior to joining ERCOT he worked in aviation, doing weather forecasting for the Minneapolis airport, and then retail doing long-range weather forecasting until he joined Exelon in 2008. |
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Robert Clark is an electrical engineer with a passion for grid reliability. He studied at North Carolina State University and earned his bachelor’s degree before pursuing a master's degree specializing in electric power systems engineering. In 2014, Robert joined FERC, where he has since made significant contributions to projects including the Winter Storm Uri and Elliot inquiries. Robert served as a co-lead on the December 2023 blackstart study report. |
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Thomas Coleman has been in the energy industry for 35 years. He started his career working for Tenneco where he worked in the natural gas transportation, marketing, and rates departments. He later worked for Williams Energy, Bear Energy, and JP Morgan Energy where he worked as a natural gas and power trader and subsequently an originator serving as vice president of East Origination where he negotiated and closed power purchase agreements, asset management deals, and load serving deals. Following JP Morgan, Mr. Coleman spent a decade as NERC’s chief technical advisor. In this role he led natural gas policy and NERC’s risk mitigation program for natural gas and power interoperability. He also served as the executive director of the Center for Grid Security at SAFE, where he developed and promoted policy changes to ensure a reliable and resilient power grid. He is currently a senior power advisor at ANL where he leads and manages projects that promote power grid reliability and resilience, focusing on the unique attributes of gas and power interdependence. Mr. Coleman holds a B.S. degree from the University of Florida and an MBA from Vanderbilt University. |
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Gerad Freeman is a senior engineer at NERC. His work focuses on scoping, constructing, and applying advanced engineering analyses and modeling to identify, understand, and communicate the reliability risks to North America’s Bulk Power System. Prior to joining NERC, Dr. Freeman led the system planning team at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and was a lab staff detailee to the grid resilience program at DOE’s Grid Deployment Office. His research focused on both gas and electric system resilience planning and operations, drawing on his experience working in the natural gas distribution industry. He holds a Ph.D. in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University, a masters in alternative energy from the University of Rochester, and a B.S. in energy systems engineering, business, and finance from Penn State. |