 Today, I am introducing the awardee from the Law and Finance Court category. Nominees are either attorneys or finance professionals or academics who are advancing innovative clean energy finance. And today, then, I am so pleased to introduce this year's awardee, Joanna Affinger. She is now recognized as one of the industry's leading experts in this complex area of project finance. And if ever there were an urgent need and opportunity for expertise in this area, it is today. Until just recently, she was Senior Director of Capital Markets at Clearway, one of the nation's largest renewable energy developers and operators. And there, she is credited for being instrumental in the company's success and expansion into these new markets. A good metric is that when she joined about seven years ago, she was part of a 25-person team today at numbers over 800. Let me give just two examples of her leadership. And there are many others. As we heard earlier about community solar, it's been an area of such promise, but also stymied by various finance and other obstacles. Joanna helped educate and bring new capital providers into that market. And together with her team, over a period of six years, raised nearly a billion dollars to helping contribute to this now vibrant market. Another example, about seven years ago, Hawaii created its fabulous goal of being 100% renewable by 2040. Joanna led the team effort to finance the state's single largest renewable portfolio to date, working with numerous stakeholders and partners to raise more than 500 million. I could list other achievements, like her work with her pro bono work with the South African startup and helping to unlock markets there. But I think you'll be as enthralled as I was with her personal journey, her modest upbringing from North African immigrants in France, her use of her math and engineering degrees into project finance. And last but not least, the mother of three young children ages one, three and a half and five teaches yoga, speaks several languages, up to five, I believe. Finally, I think her obvious passion for making a difference in the world made me not so surprised to hear that she has just become head of project finance for one of France's largest corporations, Coloss, where she's tackling the urgent and important need of making our transportation infrastructure more sustainable. So with that, please join me in congratulating Joanna Aventure. Thank you. I'll mute Joanna. Yeah. Thank you, Christine. Thank you for spending the time to get into know me and writing such a personal introduction. Thank you to the Clean Energy Education and Empowerment Initiative for the Leadership and Accomplishment Award in Law and Finance. The C3E Initiative, as you all know, is a group of over 40 senior professionals and academics brought together by the USDOE MIT Stanford in Texas A&M. And they're active in this initiative, in addition to the million other things they do in their lives with dedication and enthusiasm and passion. So thank you. I wanted to thank you to the Clean Energy Group in San Francisco for nominating me. And Next Renewables Energy in South Africa for supporting me. Congratulations to Kate, Marina, Faye, Ronda, Megan, Maryam and Steph. I am intimidated and inspired by each of you and energized to join forces and expanding our webs of passionate women in Clean Energy. Your smiles are so precious. My name is Johanna Afenjar. I am Moroccan by heritage, French by birth and newly American by heart. And although I'm proud of all these identities, I feel nevertheless, first and foremost, a guest on this planet, just alongside other human beings. Two generations ago, somewhere in Morocco, my grandparents were seamstress, fishermen, shoemakers. One generation ago in France, my parents were an accountant and an auto industry workshop worker. And today I'm an engineer by training and project finance professional working in the United States and in France. So my heritage is my North Star. It keeps me grounded, humble, third proud and thankful for the education that I've been fortunate to receive. I wanted to take a moment to share more about project finance. I'll start by talking about infrastructure. So bear with me. Infrastructure is made of the prefix infra which is the Latin word for base below underneath and the word structure, which describes something that is built, constructed, organized. So in other words, infrastructure is everything that works collectively to form the base of our societies. Transportation, communication, water, education, health, sanitation, energy, are all separate infrastructures that work together to sustain our communities. So as citizens of democratic societies, we're lucky to give our governments a social license to improve and maintain infrastructure on our behalf. Historically, governments perform this task kind of on their own. In recent history, however, governments have most frequently made the decision to outsource this task to the private sector by entering into contracts with companies to build and maintain necessary infrastructure to sustain communities. So project finance is an area of finance with the goal of sourcing public and private capital for the long-term financing of infrastructure and industrial projects. So it is a diverse, passionate, quite eclectic group of people with a precious and surprising combination of legal, technical and financial knowledge. This area of finance of the finance industry is not very common, it's not well known. And in my case, I ended up in it through an unpredictable series of inspirational connections and learning experiences. I did not have a calling, but I did have the goal of positively impacting the world. So to give a specific example, one set of projects I've worked on over the past six years is community solar, just like that. Community solar programs are programs that enable individuals and enterprises to buy solar energy, but without having to install a solar system on their premises. So in other words, it is a residential solar without a roof. It is instead a renewable financial contract settled by the transmission system. Pushed by favorable regulations, public policies, developed by the private sector, community solar in the US has gone from nothing to about a gigawatt installed as of today. So think about it as like half a million people. Because it is dematerialized and because of the improvements those contracts have brought, it also has been the opportunity for underserved communities to access renewable energy, whether it is low income families or low FICO or no FICO families. So when I clear away, we started developing community solar projects, made less a handful of banks, probably three would talk to us. As I look at it now, over a dozen banks are active, private equity and infrastructure funds have entered the field. And just that clear way, we had been able to raise close to $1 billion to support our community solar pipeline. Has not been an easy task and required dedication and strong belief in their sustainable mandates by our financiates. So education and learning does not stop in school. And educating our financiates on what we do is an amazing way of attracting capital to what we believe is rights. What I'm excited about today is that project finance and sustainability are present in all aspects of infrastructure. We need to broaden our definition of sustainable infrastructure, which is a tremendous opportunity. Roads of tomorrow will feature electric cars changing charging stations. Roads of tomorrow will be built using recycled materials. Roads of tomorrow will be built using electric construction engines powered with renewable energy. And for that matter, I don't think that tomorrow is very far out. When it's all said and done, I'm a very simple person. I am a yoga student instructor and I'm a mother of three little human beings. These walls bring me joy and ground me every day. In some ancestral traditions, women used to gather at the well to share experience and knowledge. Communities like this one are our modern version of those ancestral wells. So thank you to each of you for all your work. And here's to our wells expanding to include many, many, many more women. Thank you.