 And now it's my honor to introduce our keynote speaker, the 16th US Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm. Secretary Granholm was the 47th Governor of Michigan from 2003 to 2011, and Michigan's first female governor, particularly important to me because I was actually born in Michigan. Jennifer was born in Vancouver, Canada, and moved with her family to California at age four. She earned a bachelor's degree at UC Berkeley and a law degree from Harvard. Michigan voters elected Secretary Granholm as Attorney General in 1998. And on December 15th, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden announced his nomination of Granholm to lead the Department of Energy. The US Secretary confirmed her appointment by a wide margin on February 25th. So please join me. Just imagine that we're in a room full of applauding people. And please join me in welcoming to the C3E Women and Clean Energy Symposium and Awards US Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Thank you, Cam, for that kind introduction. Thanks so much to Stanford for hosting this year's 10th anniversary C3E symposium. So as the first female governor of Michigan and now only the second woman to serve as the Secretary of Energy, I often get asked to share advice for women that are early in their careers. And I normally say, and this is a little bit hokey, but for women who are just starting out, I think it's important. I often go say, go see the movie Wonder Woman, the first one. Seriously, Wonder Woman. I mean, I know it's hokey, but she comes from an island without men. And when she enters our world, she questions everything. Like why why do things happen the way they do? Why does society have all these rules and barriers for women? Why do women wear heels? I just feel like Wonder Woman teaches us in an accessible way to color outside the lines. She shows us we don't have to live in the box that others have constructed for us. But, you know, we can do anything. Now, I know that many of you are already Wonder Women, and the whole world could use a whole lot more of you because right now things are really in demand of the talent that women can bring. I mean, this week, for example, President Biden and the other world leaders have gathered in Glasgow, Scotland. I'm joining them as well for COP26 as the climate crisis reaches this fever pitch. So over the summer, as many of you know, one in three Americans were personally impacted by a climate supercharged extreme weather event with vulnerable communities really hit the hardest. The President, President Biden, really understands how urgent this challenge is, and that's why he is determined to get our country on a path to cut emissions in half by 2030. These are his publicly stated goals to reach 100% clean electricity by 2035 and to achieve net zero by 2050. Because clean energy is not only the answer to the climate crisis, it is also at the heart of this administration's economic agenda because by the end of this decade, the global market for clean technologies, for technologies that will reduce carbon pollution, that global market is going to be 23 trillion dollars at a minimum by 2030. What an opportunity, what an economic opportunity for entrepreneurs, for inventors, for designers, you know, to stake our claim in that 23 trillion dollar market. Congress is poised to make the biggest climate investment in US history, over 700 billion dollars when you look at the Build Back Better Reconciliation Bill and the Infrastructure Bill. It's huge and that investment is going to turbocharge clean energy buildout in every pocket of America and it's going to create millions of good paying jobs. But in order to succeed, we really need every single one of you in this fight. What an amazing time this is to launch a career in clean energy. And for those of you who are already at the front of the pack leading this charge and been doing this for decades or for years, there certainly couldn't be a better time to help other women in our ranks. Because, I mean the truth is really women are still unacceptably underrepresented in our field and it's holding our entire society back. So in the US, you probably know this, but women still make up only 27% of the STEM workforce. We make up less than one-third of the clean energy workforce. We know that in order to tackle the climate crisis and to create our clean energy future, we need effective and innovative and localized solutions. And that means that we need diverse perspectives and experiences at the table. And women need to be equally represented at a minimum. I say this because it is not just for equity purposes, which is of course important, but it's also for effectiveness purposes. So the Kellogg School of Business did a study four years ago that put the numbers behind this need for representation for diverse perspectives at the table. And their premise was that teams make better decisions than individuals. Obviously two heads are better than one. That's a no-brainer. And they found that, for example, all male teams make better decisions than individual males 58% of the time. Teams with gender diversity make better decisions 73% of the time. And teams that have all kinds of diversity, age, gender, race, geography, make better decisions 87% of the time. It is a no-brainer. If you have diversity, you just get better results, better inputs, give you better outputs. But of course, diversity won't necessarily happen on its own. We have to practice vigilant inclusion. We've got to go out of our way to overcome these systemic and structural barriers. We've got to be consciously reaching out to be inclusive. There's a really, really great example of this down the road from you right now at Slack, the National Accelerator Lab that's part of the DOE network. Slack hosts a summer camp every year for high school juniors, girls from underrepresented communities. And on average, before they went to this camp, none of them, they were nominated by professors and teachers of theirs in high school. And none of them thought that they were going to be going into a STEM field, but they were game to try this summer camp. Once they got through it, on average, 90% of them chose a STEM major in college after completing this program. We need to be consciously reaching out and exposing diverse populations to STEM. If you can't see it, you can't be as afraid as they say. So it's one example why we're working really hard to live up to this commitment to inclusion at the Department of Energy. Under the Biden-Harris administration, we built the most diverse team of political appointees in DOE history. I'm really proud to say 58% of our appointees identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of color. 58% also identify as women, 20% as LGBTQ+. We are steadfast in our commitment to diversify our workforce, not only because representation matters, and it does, but because it's going to help us build back better, but a 100% clean energy economy by 2035, which is the president's goal, and that we want to make sure that every community can benefit from that clean energy economy. My colleague, Shalonda Baker, is going to tell you more about our justice-focused work later in the program, but we are orienting the entire DOE team to make sure that 40% of the benefits of clean energy investments by this administration flow to disadvantaged communities. We're supporting communities that have been historically underserved by federal investments as those communities pursue their own clean energy goals. We want it to be inclusive, bottom up. We want to listen. We want to be middle out and bottom up, as the president often says, but that starts with listening. So we're expanding access as well to clean energy in low-income communities and communities of color, and we want to make sure that they are, instead of at the back of the line, the first in line for jobs created. We're also investing in solutions that are going to reduce pollution to lessen the burden on frontline communities that have often been in the front of the line with respect to receiving pollutants from living under the smokestacks of polluting industries. We're widening and we're deepening the talent pool for STEM to build this clean energy workforce that looks like America, and the whole time we're also listening and we're learning from tribal communities, from environmental justice leaders, from labor representatives, from local advocates across the country. We want to listen to make sure we get this right. So just so that you know DOE is using every tool in our toolbox to ensure that diverse perspectives are not only at the table, but that they are on in the front of the line as we create our clean energy future. It's going to be absolutely critical for our nation's ability to tackle a climate crisis and to build an economy that works for everyone. And no one demonstrates that value better than today's awardees. This is a group of true trailblazers that are working to achieve the cleaner, greener future of our dreams. And of course they join the ranks of a decade's worth of incredible C3E awardees. This award program really only scratches the surface of C3E's enormous impact in bringing women into clean energy and supporting them throughout their careers. So DOE is so grateful to have partners in Stanford, MIT, Texas A&M. Y'all make C3E possible and we're so proud of everything that this initiative has accomplished over the past 10 years. As we look ahead to the next 10 years with everything that needs to happen to turbocharge clean energy and to create jobs and to save the planet, it makes me feel so good to know that all of you wonder women are in this fight with all of us here at DOE. Thank you so very much and congratulations to the awardees. And now I'd like to share a C3E anniversary video. You don't have to be here more than five seconds to be inspired. Women remained consistently underrepresented in STEM generally and in energy fields specifically. So C3E was established in order to attract more women to clean energy careers, to support women's advancement, to provide role models and advocates for women. Emphasized strongly both the women in clean energy and I might just add minorities in energy as well. When we come in our careers and we find a place that's welcoming and where you can work and just focus on your passion, that is wonderful. The network really gives you access to people who have specific knowledge and skill sets that I don't think we would otherwise have the opportunity to network with. It's really amazing to hear some of the cultural stories and knowledge that our Indigenous peoples have that are embedded, truly embedded in science and engineering, technology and math. You have to be strategic in your focus if you want to actually change the outcome of the opportunity. You have to go where the community is. You got to take the science to the community. We need to let these kids, young women, girls, work in unstructured and unsterile environments where there are no right answers. We need to let them build and fail and build again. We need to have those courageous conversations in order to change hearts and minds and behaviors. And if we want a transition to a regenerative, clean energy economy that includes and benefits everyone, the process, the how we get there has to be equitable and just. I find that the older I get, it's much more important to me to help younger women in their careers. My wish for each of you is that you will have someone say to you what I say about my empathy. I hope that they will say that you are dedicated, competent and innovative, that you are passionate about making the world a better place and that all of those qualities came together to make you both a person who changes the world and a person whose family loves her. It's important to support women in all stages of their careers. With this incredible group, we're all powerful as individuals. We're even more powerful together. And let's lead the way to a world where everyone has sustainable energy.