 Hello my name is Maria Vargas. I'm at the U.S. Department of Energy and I'm in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and for this purpose I am also very excited because I'm the lead ambassador for the C3E program at the U.S. Department of Energy and it's my pleasure to welcome you back from the break and then to spend a little bit of time with you today just talking about USC3E and why today's and this conference's focus on justice and equity and clean energy is so important and to talk a little bit about C3E I want to help us all celebrate the past 10 years. We're going to glance a little bit backward and celebrate all the things we've done together as a C3E community and I also want to help us spend a little bit of time focusing forward on where we hope to go and what's coming up in the next 10 years. So the Secretary of Energy teed up this morning a little bit about why women in diversity is so important in the clean energy sector while women represent about half of the U.S. total labor force and make up less than a third of those employed in the renewable energy sector and we know that if we want to transform the world's energy system we need a diverse talented leadership team to meet our nations and truly our world's goals as we look to address climate change. We need to not only keep women in clean energy we need to focus on the future and we also need to make sure that women enter and stay in the clean energy space. So for that reason next slide 10 years ago the U.S. Department of Energy and some of our partners set up the Clean Energy Education and Empowerment Initiative C3E. The goal of C3E as you all know is to advance women's leadership in clean energy and the goal of this group is really to work together work with all of you to close the gender gap and increase the participation leadership and success of women in the clean energy field and DOE is thrilled to do that in collaboration with Stanford, MIT and Texas A&M we couldn't ask for better partners in this initiative. So if we go to the next slide I think it's just worth celebrating just spending a minute to celebrate all the things that we've done together as a C3E initiative over the last decade. We are in our 10th year and as a organization as a group and as a network we continue to grow and engage with women across the country truly across the world and their supporters. We have had over the past 10 years over 85 award winners from all over the U.S. We've received over 1400 award nominations and we're thrilled because this is our 10th symposium. Now granted some of those in the past couple years have been virtual but that's also been a nice opportunity to allow us to invite all of you many of you who can't attend sometimes when it's in person so we're thrilled that we've had the opportunity to meet with many of you over the past 10 years. We have 40 ambassadors I'll talk about those folks in a minute those are very key to how it is that we have and will continue to make sure that C3E is an important and powerful initiative moving ahead. Something new we did which we'll talk about in a minute is launch other ways to connect with women and their supporters as they face challenges and address barriers and clean energy and that's been through a series of webinars that we've held over the last year and I'll share you a little bit information about that and then what's coming up next and importantly we're growing our social media presence so we can touch with all of you about the things we're doing as C3E and as our community and the opportunities to network be involved and meet with each other. So next I just want to give a shout out as we glance backward and forward to the C3E ambassadors these ambassadors work on a voluntary basis they are selected to be part of what makes C3E run. These women mostly women some men are from all across our economy they're from academia they're from government they're from policy they're from the public private sectors utilities but these ambassadors not only help strategically with the direction of C3E but they're instrumental in determining award winners every year and opportunities that C3E has to continue to engage not only with all of you but to drive and advance women's leadership and clean energy. So for all of you ambassadors who are listening thank you so much for all of us at DOE, MIT, Stanford and Texas A&M for all the work that you do to continue to push C3E forward and to make sure that we are meeting the needs of the market. Next slide please. As you all know hopefully many of you know because you're joining us here today one of the best things that we get to do as an organization is recognize leadership mid-career leadership through the C3E awards every year and you can see and heard from some of these award winners already this morning about from them and the ambassadors who introduced them but what it is they've done and why they were selected as this year's award winners. We also have a lifetime achievement award winner that will be early in tomorrow's program that we choose once a year to highlight someone that has dedicated and has a lifetime worth of achievements and really success and clean energy that can serve as an inspiration for all of us. So next slide. Just want to give a shout out to those award winners over the past 10 years. These are the over 85 women who have achieved and received C3E awards over the past 10 years and they're an incredibly amazing group of women they are diverse they come from all different parts of the country and deal over the world and so what's really exciting about this group and I hope many of you stay with us during the breaks because many of these award winners have submitted videos in which you can hear from them as previous award winners about not only the work that they're doing and continue to do in C3E and in clean energy but how C3E became a very important part of their journey. So next slide. I think what's really inspiring about the award winners is their contribute their contributions and the work they continue to do to lead, mentor and create networks around clean energy. So we are thrilled because many of the award winners continue to drive breakthroughs in science and technology. Many of them are active in policy. Many of them are active in government organizations both local and national. They are helping to build and expand markets and prepare the workforce for today and tomorrow and equally importantly almost all of them are continuing to help women to find their way and encourage them to or to enter and stay into clean energy. So I want to congratulate again all of the award winners. Next slide please as well as this year's award winners. I wanted to also highlight this for you for everybody watching today. One of the things that we are doing because these award winners have these very unique but also very inspirational and powerful journeys is to encourage you to go to the C3E website and read more about the award winners. We share not only their achievements as you can imagine we would in terms of what they've achieved in their career and their organization, why they won their award but also this year's awardees are sharing their journey, how they got where they are, how they've followed their way to the clean energy space and I encourage all of you to read those. They're very inspirational, they're very different and they're very exciting to read so I encourage you to go to the C3E website and listen to and hear from award winners in their own words about their journey and about the success they're finding in clean energy. Next slide please. So with that I want to bring us forward to today. We want on behalf of all of us to congratulate our 2021 U.S. C3E award winners this year a truly outstanding group of women very diverse in the fields they represent accomplishments that they've had and contributions they've made so I know you've heard from some of those today you'll hear from some more tomorrow all very exciting and I'm thrilled that you're here to be with us to listen to them and their stories and why they've won these awards congratulations to all this year's award winners. We can go to next slide please. Now let's focus on the future. Where is C3E going in the future? And one of the things that we want to make sure that folks are aware is that we're going to do another set of awards next year as we do. It's a key part of what we do in C3E and we want everyone to know that those nominations open up January 10th. So if you know of a mid-career woman who's a rising leader in the clean energy sector please consider nominating her for the 2022 U.S. C3E award. Again nominations open on the 10th of January each winner receives a cash award and recognition and the opportunity to talk to all of us at the annual C3E symposium so please do consider nominating someone you know that might be deserving of a C3E award who would love it if you did that. So as I mentioned before one of the things that we're trying to do and certainly this has been tremendously helpful in the pandemic that we found ourselves in the past couple years but I think it's an opportunity that has proven to be very useful for all of us as a community and that is ongoing webinars that we're able to bring experts C3E award winners C3E ambassadors and others to highlight not only the work they're doing but to talk about some of the challenges and barriers and expertise that they have in a way that allows us to continue networking not just at this annual meeting but once a quarter. The next webinar that we have is one that you all helped to design. We know that we had a lot of women and men mostly women starting out in their careers or interested in being part of the clean energy sector ask us for a webinar in which they could hear from different ambassadors different leaders different clean energy advocates in different sectors about how they the advice they would give to people who are joining the clean energy sector and the clean energy work that this country is doing. So these you can see on screen and you can go on to our website. These are ambassadors who represented an array of sectors who want to help you if you're interested in figuring out how you could possibly use your talents and skills and the clean energy space and join us in doing that we encourage you to come to this webinar. You can register for the webinar online at C3E and we encourage all of you to join this webinar but the ongoing webinar series and you can sign up to get emails about those webinars and information about those and we encourage you to join. Okay next one please. So looking ahead we've had a great last decade and looking ahead the next 10 years we've got even more to do. So at C3E we want to continue to advance women in clean energy. We want to make sure that all voices are heard and included. We are anxious to highlight leadership to continue to inspire action and really to continue to advance leadership across the clean energy space. My guess is in new industries with new award categories with new opportunities for mentorship and networking so that this initiative evolves with time, evolves with you and finds new ways to engage with you to help you and to help women continue to succeed in the clean energy space. We're looking to evolve and grow and accelerate and build on the momentum of the last 10 years. Next slide. So stay in touch with us. You can see on screen a number of ways you can get involved. Go to our webinars come to the symposium but things you can do is make sure that you follow us on our website make sure you're on our mailing list follow us on social media. We really want you to be part of C3E the C3E community indeed the C3E family working to help all of us stay in clean energy learn from each other and advance women's leadership. Next slide. So before I move on to my next assignment I just want to take the opportunity to thank all of you for joining us today thank all of the ambassadors who are joining today thanks MIT to Stanford to Texas A&M for all the work you do in spearheading and leading the C3E initiative with the Department of Energy you couldn't do it without you and thanks most of all to all of you for being here we look forward to hearing from you engaging with you and having you be part of our ongoing C3E growth as we move towards the future so thank you all very very much.