Data for Good Exchange SF 2019

Kate Gordon is a nationally recognized expert on the intersection of climate change, energy, and economic development. Gordon was appointed Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research by Governor Gavin Newsom on January 7, 2019. Prior to being appointed Director, Gordon was a Senior Advisor at the Paulson Institute, where she oversaw the “Risky Business Project,” focused on quantifying the economic impacts of climate change to the U.S. economy, and also provided strategic support to the Institute’s U.S.- China CEO Council for Sustainable Urbanization. She was also a nonresident Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, and an advisor to Duke University’s Center for Energy, Development, and the Global Environment.

Earlier in her career Gordon served as Vice President for Climate and Energy at the Center for the Next Generation, Vice President of Energy and Environment at the Washington D.C.-based Center for American Progress, and Co-Executive Director at the national Apollo Alliance (now part of the Blue Green Alliance).

Gordon earned a law degree and a master’s degree in city planning from the University of California-Berkeley, and an undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University.

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Meredith is the Founding Executive Director of the West Big Data Innovation Hub, a venture launched with support from the National Science Foundation to build and strengthen partnerships across industry, academia, nonprofits, and government. Based at the University of California – Berkeley, Dr. Lee collaborates globally as part of a national network of Big Data Innovation Hubs to address scientific and societal challenges. Her work focuses on translational data science, including initiatives in Smart and Connected Communities, Water, Disaster Recovery, Health, and Education. Meredith was previously a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, guiding strategic programs in graph analytics, risk assessment, machine learning, data visualization, and distributed computing. Under the Obama Administration, she led the White House Innovation for Disaster Response & Recovery Initiative and contributed to several science, technology, and open data / open government initiatives.

Meredith completed her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. She has taught Human-Centered Design and Innovation at Stanford and in government, and continues to advise organizations with efforts in technology, data science, and multi-stakeholder collaboration. Her work has been featured by whitehouse.gov, ArsTechnica, The Washington Post, Forbes, WIRED, Bloomberg, and Nature.

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Patrick Atwater is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of ARGO Labs, a startup nonprofit that provided the data infrastructure for this California water data initiative and other public services, including street maintenance, human education and homelessness abatement. He has worked as a consulting data engineer for a multi-million dollar venture-backed startup, ran the numbers for the State Water Contractors on Governor Brown’s Delta Fix project and co-authored the feature June 2015 American Water Works Association article on how data science can help water utilities adapt to climate change. As part of Team ARGO, his civic data science work has been featured by the Knight Foundation and Fast Coexist. He studied mathematics and PPE at Claremont McKenna College and holds a master’s degree in urban informatics from NYU CUSP. 

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As the Director of California Health and Human Services Office of Innovation, Chaeny Emanavin is applying human centered design, iterative/agile methodologies, design thinking and deep dive problem definition techniques to create novel solutions for the State. Prior to joining CHHS, Chaeny was a web team lead, program manager and product manager in the federal government serving with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Digital Service. He earned a Master of Arts degree in communication, culture and technology from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University.

David R. Baker covers electric utilities and alternative energy technologies for Bloomberg News. He joined the San Francisco bureau in 2018 after 18 years at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he covered clean tech, energy and climate change, with a particular focus on such companies as PG&E, Sunrun and Tesla. David was part of the team that won the 2017 Scripps Howard Award for breaking news covering the 2017 Wine Country wildfires.

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