 I am so pleased to introduce you all to the winner of a new category that we created social economic and policy innovation for researchers who are doing social science related research. And she is Kate Anderson and works at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Tell you a little bit about Kate and her amazing accomplishments. She spent her first 12 years at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory leading a team that created a game changing NREL model called the REopt model. There are actually two of them. The first online energy optimization tools that allow anyone to quickly perform evaluations of solar and wind and storage deployment for specific sites. And this team over time has worked with many different organizations, public, nonprofit, private sector to identify 4,000 megawatts of cost effective projects. So that is very impressive. And Kate recently took on a new role at NREL. She is now Energy Systems Integration Chief of Staff and she is leading strategic planning, but also very relevant to yesterday and today's program. Kate is also tasked with coordinating environmental justice activities across NREL, ensuring that the lab is embedding equity in all of their work from research through deployment. Okay, so Kate did her undergrad at MIT as she has what we call an aeroastro degree. And she's now she has two masters, but she's also pursuing an almost done with her PhD in advanced energy systems that she's doing at Colorado State. And I think it's so impressive because she has this technical background and is now layering that with studying and analyzing social science methods to understand why people implement clean energy solutions. She's developing methods that go beyond the traditional techno economic modeling and analysis. And she's looking at behavioral factors integrating those to look at why people are making energy decisions and what kind of factors might influence them like social networks that they belong to. So Kate, congratulations on your accomplishments and you are clearly on a path to achieve much more to help the world pivot as soon as possible with a just clean energy transition. Thank you Martha for that introduction and thank you to the C3 Ambassadors for this award. I think this is an amazing program that brings together so many inspiring women and I am just so honored to get to be a part of it this year. As NREL's inaugural energy justice coordinator, I think the theme of this year's symposium is really near and dear to my heart. I've spent the better part of my career at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory where our vision is a clean energy future for the world and we focus on developing and delivering sustainable solutions that allow everyone to benefit from the energy transition. And so I really loved hearing from all the speakers yesterday and today about all the ways that they're working to make our energy future more equitable. I feel so fortunate to have found NREL 13 years ago with dreams of being an astronaut. I initially studied aerospace engineering in college and then I started my career as an officer in the Air Force launching satellites. And while I was stationed at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, I became really interested in green building because New Mexico has this long tradition of sustainable building from adobe and straw bales to these urships that are made out of tires and designed to collect their own water and grow their own food. And so you know being there really sparked a new passion and I decided to change course and pursue a master's in renewable energy. And in that degree helped me transition to NREL where I was hired by Nancy Carlisle who really took a chance on someone with very little experience but a lot of passion and you know I can still remember my interview with her because she asked me what I was passionate about and what I wanted to work on and no one had ever asked me that before in a job. But at NREL that idea is really central to everything we do. We are all there driven by a common passion and a common mission to save the world. And since then I've had the opportunity to work with many team members and I've always tried to carry on Nancy's idea of really enabling people to work on their passions because I think that's what makes NREL so successful. I've been fortunate to have many mentors and mentees that I learned from along the way. So starting with my mom and dad who always thought I could do anything and help me pursue every opportunity from space camp to MIT to even quitting work for a while to go climbing. Sheila Hader and Andrea Watson who nominated me for this award have been my staunch supporters and mentors and cheerleaders since my earliest days at NREL providing these amazing examples to learn from and to look up to. And then my modeling analysis and re-op teams have taught me so much about being a leader and a mentor but also about the importance of having that work community that really feels like family. And then my PhD advisors and my colleagues in the Colorado School of Minds Advanced Energy Systems program have been just an inspiring example of the results that you get from bringing together many diverse disciplines to tackle a huge problem just as the C3 initiative does. So in closing I would like to thank my NREL team. I feel really lucky to get to stand here today but all of my accomplishments have been team accomplishments and I really feel so fortunate to get to work with and be inspired by my NREL colleagues every day. And of course most importantly I'd like to thank my husband Mark and my kids Logan and Amalie who have supported me every step of the way and they are you know ultimately my foundation and my inspiration and my reason for doing this work. And so you know while it would feel easy I think or while it would be easy to feel lost in the huge challenge we are facing with climate change instead you know I get to feel inspired every day by all of the smart people that are working together in ways large and small to fix it. And by these people who see this huge challenge in front of them and they rise up to meet it. There's this quote that I like from one of Mary Oliver's poems where she asks what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life. And for me and I think for many of us here today we are the lucky ones that have you know found the answer to in a really meaningful career in clean energy. So I really appreciate the recognition here today. I hope that I can pass it on by helping to bring up the next generation of women and of men and of engineers and social scientists and communicators and all the diverse people that we need to win this fight. So thank you so much.