2025 Speaker Bios

Toni Atkins | Former President pro Tempore, California State Senate

Toni’s story started in the rural reaches of Appalachia, where she grew up one of four children to Betty and Jim Atkins. Despite working themselves to the bone, Jim, a lead and coal miner, and Betty, a seamstress who worked in a garment factory, lived paycheck to paycheck and rented a home without running water and an outhouse to share.

Toni was a kid who got free breakfasts at school and got her first pair of glasses donated by the local Lions Club. Whose parents never had time off, and always had a doctor’s bill overdue. Who went to church camp on a scholarship and dreamed of being the first person in her family to go to college. That dream came true as she worked hard in school and graduated from Emory & Henry College in Virginia.

Her early years taught Toni the value of a dollar — and more importantly, the values that help you get through when dollars are scarce: Doing the most good you possibly can for others. Safeguarding the most vulnerable among us. Respecting people’s decisions and protecting their dignity. Toni first heard about California from her father, who reminisced about a beautiful place where he was stationed while serving in World War II. She daydreamed about one day going there while working in a dry cleaners — until the day she got a call from her twin sister, Tenia, who was stationed in San Diego while serving in the Navy. It was the mid-1980’s, and Tenia’s Navy husband was being deployed. Tenia was soon to deliver their first child, and needed help. Toni packed her car and set out from Virginia to California to help her sister and their newborn son. She came to California to help her twin. She stayed to help millions more.

At just 27, she was named the Director of Clinic Services at San Diego’s Womancare Health Center, where she helped low-income women access reproductive care — even when anti-abortion extremists tried to block access. Years later as a legislator, Toni proudly wrote laws that removed obstacles keeping women from getting the health care they needed, especially in rural areas and other underserved communities. And after the gut-wrenching Dobbs decision leaked, she wrote the constitutional amendment to protect the right to abortion and contraception for generations to come — and led the effort with Planned Parenthood and other grassroots clinics and organizations to ensure it was approved by a majority of California voters.

After working in the women’s clinic, Toni went to work as a staff member at City Hall, later running and winning a seat on the City Council in 2000, where she passed San Diego’s first living wage law. When the Mayor of San Diego resigned during a period of crisis, Toni served as acting Mayor and helped San Diego successfully navigate the scandal. Elected by voters to the state Assembly in 2010, Toni served there for six years. In 2014, her colleagues selected her to be the Speaker of the Assembly, becoming the first San Diegan and the first lesbian to hold the position. As someone who grew up in a house without running water, Toni counts passing a $7.5-billion investment in clean, safe and reliable drinking water supplies as one of her proudest accomplishments as Speaker of the Assembly.

In 2016, San Diego voters elected her to the State Senate — and after just one year, she was again selected by her colleagues to serve as Senate President pro Tempore, becoming the first woman and the first openly LGBTQ person to lead the Legislature’s upper house. Atkins is the first person in 150 years, the third person in California history, and the only woman to lead both houses of the Legislature. During her time in the Legislature, she negotiated eight on-time balanced budgets with two Governors, building record reserves without raising taxes on working people. As a leader, she negotiated the passage of historic climate goals and increased access to health care.

Toni has worked to create good-paying jobs and bolster worker protections, and she’s expanded educational opportunities so that nothing gets in the way of California’s children being able to learn. She’s a champion for affordable housing, the environment, health care, veterans, women, and the LGBTQ+ community. She has led legislative efforts to protect victims of crime, including children being trafficked and women facing domestic violence. These are the people and causes she’s spent a lifetime fighting for, driven by the values that will continue to guide her campaign for Governor.

Featured Speaker

Rick Cole | Councilmember, City of Pasadena

Rick Cole has spent four decades in public service prior to being elected to rejoin the Pasadena City Council in the March 6th election. He has been a Pasadena Councilmember and Mayor as well as City Manager in Azusa, Ventura and Santa Monica. Called “one of Southern California’s most visionary planning thinkers,” he was elected again to the Council in March. A former Deputy Mayor for Budget and Innovation in the City of Los Angeles, he is currently that city’s Chief Deputy Controller, overseeing the accounting, payroll, and audit functions for a $13.2 billion dollar budget.

Rick has been recognized nationally as one of America’s “Public Officials of the Year” by Governing Magazine and won awards for his expertise in municipal management from the American Association of Public Administrators and the Municipal Management Association of Southern California. His hallmark has always been how to improve results for people, striving for “government that works better and costs less.”

Session: Prop 4 – Putting the Climate Bond into Action

Wade Crowfoot | Secretary for California Natural Resources (invited)

Wade Crowfoot serves as California’s Natural Resources Secretary, leading efforts to conserve California’s environment and natural resources. He has served as Secretary since 2019 and advises Governor Newsom as a member of his cabinet.

Secretary Crowfoot oversees an agency of over 25,000 employees spread across 26 departments, commissions, and conservancies. His agency is charged with stewarding California’s forests and natural lands, rivers and water supplies, and coast and ocean. It also protects natural places, wildlife and biodiversity, and helps oversee the state’s world-leading clean energy transition.

Secretary Crowfoot is leading efforts to achieve Governor Newsom’s ambitious environmental vision, including a commitment to conserve 30 percent of California’s land and coastal waters by 2030. He oversees billions of dollars of public investment to protect people and natural places from climate change impacts, and has led efforts to navigate California’s record-breaking droughts, floods, and wildfires. Secretary Crowfoot has also initiated a new era of partnerships with California Native American Tribes and is shifting how the agency operates to better support all California residents and communities.

Secretary Crowfoot has been on the frontlines of environmental leadership throughout his career. He served in Governor Jerry Brown’s Administration as deputy cabinet secretary and senior advisor to the Governor, driving climate action. He led the non-profit Water Foundation to build water resilience across the American West. He spearheaded efforts to establish and defend California’s landmark climate change policies as West Coast regional director for the Environmental Defense Fund. As an environmental advisor to then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, he helped establish many first-in-the-nation urban environmental policies. Secretary Crowfoot received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s degree from the London School of Economics.

Session: Prop 4 – Putting the Climate Bond into Action

Abby Edwards | Climate and Planning Deputy Director,Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation

Abby Edwards serves as the Acting Executive Director of Planning and Policy, Deputy Director for Climate and Planning at the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation (LCI), and Chair of the Integrated Climate Adaptation and Resilience Program (ICARP) Technical Advisory Council.

With over a decade of experience in climate adaptation and resilience, Abby has led statewide programs, managed interdisciplinary teams, and fostered partnerships across government and nonprofit sectors. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal and manager of climate-focused service programs at CivicWell, Abby Edwards brings a deep commitment to advancing sustainable, equitable, and impactful solutions to California’s most pressing climate challenges.

Session: Resilient People, Resilient Communities: Forward-Looking Local and Regional Collaboration

Carl Guardino | VP of Global Government Affairs, Tarana Wireless

Carl serves as the VP of Government Affairs & Policy for Tarana Wireless. After three decades in CEO and senior officer roles, including 24 years as CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Carl came to Tarana after leading global government affairs for Bloom Energy. Carl also serves as Chair of the CA Transportation Commission, which annually programs and allocates nearly $14 billion in transportation improvements throughout the state.

Through his past leadership roles, Carl has led and co-led 19 statewide, regional, and countywide ballot initiatives, winning 18 out of 19 campaigns. Carl graduated from San Jose State University, where he is a Distinguished Alumnus. Outside of work, Carl is a runner, cyclist, and triathlete, having completed 19 marathons and three IRONMANs. Carl and his wife, Leslee, have three children.

Martha Guzman | US EPA Regional Administrator, Region 9

Martha Guzman was sworn in as EPA Regional Administrator for the nation’s Pacific Southwest Region (Region 9) on December 20, 2021. In this role she is leading EPA efforts to protect public health and the environment for the region spanning Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, the U.S. Pacific Islands territories, and 148 Tribal Nations. Her focus is on advancing President Biden and Administrator Regan’s priorities in the areas of climate change, environmental justice and scientific integrity, and more broadly on achieving progress in making the air, land and water cleaner and safer for the residents of the Pacific Southwest. Notable in a region with a significant Hispanic/Latino population, Guzman is the first Latina to serve as Regional Administrator.

Martha Guzman came to this EPA position after having served as a Commissioner at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for the previous five years. Her portfolio included fiscal oversight of utilities, broadband for all, water affordability, access to clean energy programs for disadvantaged communities, and prevention of disconnections of basic utilities. She spearheaded the Interagency Solar Consumer Protection Taskforce, the Tribal Land Policy, and Covid Arrears Response. She also represented the CPUC on the California Broadband Council and the Lithium Valley Commission.

Prior to joining the CPUC Guzman served as Deputy Legislative Affairs Secretary in the Office of the Governor of California, where she worked on the legislative passage of the Human Right to Water and the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, reorganized the Safe Drinking Water Program, and advanced climate goals related to short-lived climate pollutants and renewable energy legislation. Earlier in her career, she was Sustainable Communities program director for the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation. She also worked for Swanton Berry Farm on human resource issues, and before that, she was the legislative coordinator for United Farm Workers.

Guzman earned a Master of Science degree in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Davis, and a Bachelor of Science in International Economics from Georgetown University.

Session: Insights from Federal Agency Leaders on the Next Four Years 

Angie Hacker | CEO, Prosper Sustainably

Angie Hacker is the CEO of Prosper Sustainably, LLC a woman-owned, microbusiness based in CA. She has 25 years of experience designing and leading community climate, energy, and land use initiatives in private, nonprofit and public roles spanning local, state, federal, and tribal government. Among current consulting roles, she serves as Statewide Best Practices Coordinator for the California Climate and Energy Collaborative (CCEC). She previously served as Sustainability Division Chief for the County of Santa Barbara and oversaw local, state, federal, and ratepayer-funded energy and climate initiatives. Her areas of expertise include identifying needs, designing innovative local and regional solutions, communicating a strategic vision, pursuing policy and regulatory opportunities, obtaining resources, building local capacity, leveraging cross-sector partnerships, and engaging stakeholders. She enjoys managing complex projects and datasets to achieve results within multi-agency, political and bureaucratic environments. Angie earned a Master of Public Administration from New York University and a Bachelor of Science in Applied Social Psychology from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. 

Session: Regional Roundtables

Heidi Hall | Supervisor, County of Nevada

District 1 Supervisor and Chair of the Nevada County Board of Supervisors Heidi Hall began her first term in January of 2017. She served as the chair of the board in 2020, and was re-elected to serve a second term beginning January 2021.

Heidi Hall enjoyed spending summers and holidays in Nevada County as she grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in a family of educators. In 2005, she moved to the family cabin to raise her two boys and enjoy the natural beauty and community Nevada County offers year round. Building rural social and economic resiliency through protecting forest health, expanding broadband, promoting outdoor recreation and maintaining our local quality of life has been her focus for over a decade. She enjoys serving on local, regional and statewide committees and takes pride in being both collaborative and solutions driven. She brings both professional expertise and a life-long love of the Sierra Nevada Foothills to everything she does.

Her leadership is informed by 25 years of experience as an environmental professional with the federal and state governments, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where she managed both budgets and staff and as program manager at Resources Conservation Board, (SWRCB) and the Department of Water Resources (DWR). This unique experience in water and resource management lead to working on initiatives in four states and with 122 tribes. Her professional experience in this sector is both a point of pride and a reflection of the collaborative problem solving she brings to complicated issues.

In addition to her work as District 1 Supervisor, she currently serves as a program manager with the California State Department of Water Resources. She works with government leaders at all levels and expertise, from both the scientific and policy communities, to find solutions to pressing policy issues.
As a community activist, Heidi has served on several non-profit Boards, volunteered as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for Children (CASA), and even participated in “Dancing with our Stars,” a fundraiser for The Center for the Arts. Heidi ran for Congress in District 1 in 2014, where she gained a broad base of support for her advocacy regarding local rural issues, including better solutions to homelessness, meeting unmet mental health care needs, fire safety (and other public safety measures) and the need for better internet connectivity for a stable and sustainable economy. She has served as a delegate for and is currently an Executive Board member to the California State Democratic Party.

Session: Fortifying the Future: Actions for Safeguarding Housing and Wildlands Amid Wildfire Risk and Insurance Uncertainty

Dave Jones | Director of the Climate Risk Initiative, UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center on Law, Energy and Environment (CLEE)

Dave Jones is Director of the Climate Risk Initiative at UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center on Law, Energy and Environment (CLEE). Jones was Senior Director for Environmental Risk at The Nature Conservancy from January 2019 – June 2021 and a Distinguished Fellow with the ClimateWorks Foundation. At The Nature Conservancy Jones led efforts to demonstrate successfully that insurance modeling is able to account for the risk reduction benefits of nature based mitigation of risk and loss and that insurance losses and pricing can benefit from nature based mitigation. Jones served as California’s Insurance Commissioner from 2011 through 2018. He founded and chaired the Sustainable Insurance Forum (SIF), an international network of insurance regulators developing climate risk regulatory best practices. Jones was the first US financial regulator to require disclosure of investments in fossil fuel assets due to concerns about climate change related risk and the first to conduct climate risk scenario analysis of insurers’ investment portfolios. At CLEE, Jones first recommended California enact climate risk disclosure requirements and with his team drafted the original version of SB 261 (Stern), California’s recently enacted landmark climate risk disclosure law. Jones has testified before Congress, state legislatures, the G-20 Financial Stability Board, and numerous regulatory agencies, about the need for financial regulators to address climate change and the risks it poses to the financial system. Jones is a graduate of DePauw University (B.A), Harvard Law School (J.D.), and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (MPP).

Session: Fortifying the Future: Actions for Safeguarding Housing and Wildlands Amid Wildfire Risk and Insurance Uncertainty

Sean Kennedy, Ph.D. | Deputy Director of Energy Investments, California Strategic Growth Council

Sean Kennedy is Deputy Director of Energy Investments at the California Strategic Growth Council. He has over ten years of climate change planning and policy experience across public, private, and nonprofit sectors, including positions at the Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency in Canberra, Australia, the World Agroforestry Centre in Bogor, Indonesia, and the Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA.

Before joining SGC, Dr. Kennedy was an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where his research and teaching focused on the equity impacts of energy and climate change policy in California and Southeast Asia.

Session: Resilient People, Resilient Communities: Forward-Looking Local and Regional Collaboration

Michael McCormick | Founder and President, Farallon Strategies

Session: Regional Roundtables

Jonathan Parfrey | Executive Director, Climate Resolve

Before founding Climate Resolve, Jonathan Parfrey served as a commissioner at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (2008-2013). Jonathan is a member of the LA28 Olympics and Paralympic Games Sustainability Working Group. He is a founder and board member of CicLAvia, the popular street event, as well as a founder of the statewide Alliance of Regional Collaboratives for Climate Adaptation. He served as director of the GREEN LA Coalition (2007-2011) and as the Los Angeles director of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization Physicians for Social Responsibility (1994 to 2007). Prior to that, Jonathan founded and directed the Orange County Catholic Worker (1987-1993). He was appointed to Governor Schwarzenegger’s Environmental Policy Team in 2003.

Jonathan received the Paul S. Delp Award for Outstanding Service, Peace, and Social Justice (1992), was awarded a Durfee Foundation Fellowship (2002), a Stanton Fellowship (2010), and was appointed a Senior Fellow at the USC Marshall School of Business (2011). He is currently an advisory board member at the UCLA Center for Healthy Climate Solutions; a fellow at the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities; a member of the State of California Climate Adaptation Technical Advisory Council (2016); a member of the steering committee for the US Climate and Health Alliance(2016); a member of the steering committee of the Tiüac’a’ai Healthy Land Project of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians; and an advisory board member at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation; Advisory Board Member, Water Education for Latino Leaders (WELL). In April 2016, he received the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair’s Green Leadership Award. When he’s not at work, Jonathan likes to hang out with his wife, Nancy L. Cohen, his four children, and four grandchildren, as well as going with friends on epic hikes and bike rides.

Session: Regional Roundtables

Grace Person | Principal, CeresCollab

Grace Person is a seasoned professional with over a decade of expertise in community planning, water policy, and multi-stakeholder collaboration. As Principal at CeresCollab, Grace leads transformative initiatives, advising on funding strategies, managing complex projects, and fostering partnerships that empower groups to achieve sustainable and equitable outcomes.

In her previous work Grace has spearheaded efforts to secure state grants, develop innovative water and mobility programs, and lead strategic initiatives that address climate resilience and community connectivity. Her current work includes facilitating the NGO Groundwater Collaborative and Groundwater Leadership Forum and leading community engagement to plan and implement multi-benefit agricultural land repurposing projects in the Central Valley.

Grace’s extensive experience spans public engagement, policy analysis, and organizational strategic planning. She has worked with federal, state, and local agencies, as well as nonprofits on issues ranging from community planning, water and land use planning, disaster response, and accessibility needs. As a skilled facilitator, she has led collaborative workshops and convenings to align diverse stakeholders toward shared goals and workable solutions. She is deeply committed to supporting and partnering with groups as they explore and create resilience, sustainability, and community well-being.

Grace holds a Master’s in Environmental Law and Policy from Vermont Law School and Graduate School, and a Bachelor’s in Sociology from Colorado College. She lives near Modesto, CA with her family, and has lived and worked in rural and urban communities in California, Colorado, New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

Session: Water Innovation in Action: Lessons from Pioneering Local Initiatives

Julie Rentner | President, River Partners

Julie Rentner is president of River Partners, where she has successfully secured over $100 million in state and federal grant funding to acquire conservation properties and implement riparian and floodplain habitat restoration along major California rivers statewide. Additionally, Julie has developed and led stakeholder processes supporting the integration of flood control and ecosystem enhancement at the regional level, resulting in the development of several on-the-ground multi-benefit projects as well as the Mid San Joaquin River Regional Flood Management Plan.

Julie joined River Partners in 2008 as a restoration ecologist based in the San Joaquin Valley. She completed the California Agricultural Leadership Program in 2015. She is also the President of Reclamation District 2092, and she completed her BS in Forestry at the University of California, Berkeley and received an MS from the University of Hawaii, Manoa.

Session: Water Innovation in Action: Lessons from Pioneering Local Initiatives