When Sam Alvord started serving in the Coast Guard in 1998, diesel fuel cost $1.60 per gallon. He is starting his 20th year of service with the U.S. Coast Guard. In his current position, Mr. Alvord is in charge of setting energy policy and direction across the entire 88,000 member service, and advises the Assistant Commandant for Engineering and Logistics on all energy policy, financial, and strategic matters. He has served on extended detail with the Department of Homeland Security, Chief Readiness Support Officer (CRSO) staff and continues to advise and formulate departmental energy resiliency and renewable energy strategies. Mr. Alvord’s office is responsible for managing over $300 million dollars of annual energy expenditures and is the program manager for a $240 million dollar portfolio of Energy Savings Performance Contract and Utility Energy Services Contracts. This investment portfolio has led to the Coast Guard sustaining a nearly 40% reduction in energy use intensity. Having entered the energy sector from the petroleum and biofuel sector, researching, testing and defining their corresponding firefighting extinguishing characteristics, he knows how each gallon of diesel, gasoline, kilowatt hour of electricity and all other energy commodity is acquired, stored, transferred, tested, consumed and measured throughout the Coast Guard portfolio.

As a Mechanical Engineering graduate of the Coast Guard Academy, Mr. Alvord served aboard multiple cutters on the East and Gulf coasts before being assigned to teach ship survivability and damage control at the U.S. Navy’s Surface Warfare Officers School. During that assignment, Mr. Alvord learned the value of partnerships, contingency planning, and solution engineering. He has since embraced resilience and innovation in all he does – from emergency response oriented petroleum, water and medicinal logistics coordination during the Haitian Earthquake and Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy and the Terrible Trio of 2017 (Harvey, Irma and Maria), to advancing Coast Guard financial and energy data analytics within a secure cloud IT environment. Mr. Alvord is an expert in utilizing alternatively financed infrastructure improvement projects to secure onsite power generation at critical DHS facilities, ensuring mission assurance and sustained service to mariners and the public.

Mr. Alvord completed a Master’s degree in Engineering Management from George Washington University with a focus in Systems Engineering and Knowledge Management.

Mark Correll, a member of the Senior Executive Service, is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Environment, Safety and Infrastructure, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Washington, D.C. He provides executive leadership on all matters pertaining to formulation, review and execution of plans, policies, programs, and budgets for Air Force built and natural infrastructure, environmental, safety, and occupational health programs. These include facility management, military construction, family housing, as well as acquisition, operation, maintenance, repair, and disposal of real property, environmental compliance and restoration, ground safety, and workplace health.

Mr. Correll was commissioned in the Air Force in 1981 as a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, earning a degree in civil engineering. He commanded two civil engineer squadrons, a mission support group, and an air base wing. He retired in 2010 in the rank of colonel. Prior to his current assignment, Mr. Correll served as the Air Force Deputy Civil Engineer. In that position he provided leadership, direction and technical knowledge to organize, train, and equip a 60,000-person engineering force as well as development, construction, operation, maintenance, emergency response, readiness, housing, and environmental quality of Air Force bases worldwide. He was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in 2010. Mr. Correll is registered as a licensed professional engineer in the state of Texas.

Mark Feasel is Vice President, Electric Utility Segment & Smart Grid at Schneider Electric. He is responsible for Schneider Electric’s Smart Grid activities in North America which are focused on optimizing energy efficiency, resiliency, and sustainability from the electric utility control center through a consumer’s loads. Mr. Feasel’s experience with microgrid began in the 1980’s when he was responsible for the operation and maintenance of the electrical systems associated with the nuclear reactor on a ballistic missile submarine, and have continued throughout his career while leading an energy management and distributed generation controls company, and leading commercial operations of the Power Management and Controls business for Schneider Electric North America.

Kinga Porst Hydras, is a High Performance Building Expert in the GSA Office of Federal High-Performance Buildings, with particular focus on sub-metering, energy efficiency programs, renewable energy, and indoor environmental quality. She has been working on improving the usage of Energy Savings Performance Contracts in the federal government, forming public-private partnerships to achieve deep energy retrofits in existing buildings. Ms. Hydras is a member of the GSA ESPC Program Management Office. She is also a member of the Interagency Energy Management Task Force, Better Buildings Alliance, and Energy Exchange Planning Committee.

Ms. Hydras has an MBA from Case Western Reserve University and a Masters in Engineering degree from the Technical University of Budapest. She is a CEM and a LEED-AP.

Robert Johnson is Senior Vice President and Group Head, Federal and National Accounts at
Hannon Armstrong with responsibility for growing financing solutions in the federal sector and with national account customers. Mr. Johnson has been at the leading edge of the energy efficiency industry where he has built businesses across a broad range of systems in the energy services business.

Prior to joining Hannon Armstrong, Mr. Johnson held executive leadership positions at early stage start-up organizations in the energy efficiency market. Prior to these assignments, he held senior leadership positions in multinational organizations such as Cooper Industries and Ingersoll Rand (Trane) where he led institutional sales for North America. Prior to this assignment, he held the global sales leadership role for Johnson Controls’ Federal Systems Division. Mr. Johnson began his career at Honeywell, where he held leadership positions in various divisions of Honeywell during his 15 year tenure there.

Mr. Johnson has been published in Military Engineer magazine and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Maryland.

Mr. Kirshenberg is the Managing Partner of the Washington, DC and Richmond offices and is the firm’s co-chair of the national energy group and P3 infrastructure group. He advises clients in the acquisition, selling, leasing, and development of private and federal and state energy projects. He has worked on the financing and structuring of over $15 billion in government privatized transactions.

He regularly structures, negotiates, documents and closes large, complex transactions for lenders, developers, federal agencies, state entities, and municipalities. Mr. Kirshenberg’s unique practice requires him to work on all phases of projects including legislative authority development, procurement, design and construction, operation, work-outs, and everything in between.

In the energy arena, Mr. Kirshenberg has closed transactions involving energy efficiency, smart-grid, battery storage, smart-house demonstration, photo-voltaic (PV), low-flow turbine generation, wind, co-generation facilities, bio-fuel facilities, energy savings performance contracts, utility energy savings contracts,  and other energy projects. He has written several books for the Department of Energy on small modular reactor project financing and contracting and works on assisting developers structure energy resilience purchases. In fact, last month he represented the issuer on the first capital market financed spent nuclear fuel facility in the world (Ukraine – with a sovereign guaranty and an Overseas Private Investment Corporation insurance policy).
Mr. Kirshenberg has served on several DOE, Department of Defense, and other federal agency advisory boards and non-profit policy committees on real estate and energy issues. He has authored and co-authored several books and guides on military base closure, the redevelopment of DOE and DOD facilities, brownfields redevelopment, nuclear power, and environmental cleanup. He regularly speaks at national conferences on energy financing, energy transaction structures, real estate, and financing issues, and has published numerous articles on redeveloping federal facilities.

Mr. Kirshenberg holds a Juris Doctorate degree from the Washington College of Law at the American University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Florida.

Joel Langill is Director – Industrial Control System Cybersecurity Services with AECOM. His role focuses on developing and delivering global excellence across multiple divisions within AECOM as they relate to industrial security methodologies, tools, recruitment, and personnel development. The position leverages Mr. Langill's prior security experience through the implementation of a globally proven industrial security methodology, coupled with one of the leading industrial cybersecurity application and testing labs of its kind built in close cooperation with numerous solution leaders in the industrial security sector.

The result not only allows AECOM to offer unique solutions to their vast range of clients, but the ability to internally test and refine solutions during the early concept development phase.

Previously, Mr. Langill was an operational security profession and founder of SCADAhacker.com, where he provided an expansive range of cyber security services devoted to securing industrial control systems used as part of our critical infrastructure, including risk assessment and classification, policy development, vulnerability assessment, countermeasure selection/implementation, penetration testing, standards/regulatory compliance, auditing, and training.

Mr. Langill graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering.

Leslie Nicholls is the Acting Director for the U.S. Department of Energy Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). She previously served as FEMP's Strategic Communications and Training Manager.
As Acting FEMP Director, Ms. Nicholls oversees the implementation of policy and actions that result in energy efficiency implementation, renewable energy adoption, and reductions in energy and water use in federal government operations.

Ms. Nicholls brings nearly three decades of clean energy and executive leadership experience to EERE. Most recently, she served as Vice President of the Building Energy Solutions Division at Energetics Incorporated, a subsidiary of VSE Corporation. In this capacity, she was responsible for the management of multiple cross-cutting programs. She also provided expertise to federal agencies and private sector energy companies in federal and commercial energy management, greenhouse gas reduction, energy efficiency, clean energy deployment, and strategic planning. Before holding that position, she worked at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as a Senior Contracting Officer.

Ms. Nicholls has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Business Administration from Washington State University.

Kurmit Rockwell is a member of the Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program Project Services team where he serves as the ESPC program manager, overseeing FEMPs services, tools, training, and resources needed to assist agencies with implementing successful ESPC projects. 

Over a career spanning more than 25 years Mr. Rockwell’s work included engineering and implementation of ESPC projects for federal and state and local governments.  He has been involved in all aspects of ESPC projects from project inception through post award performance period activities and has worked for a couple of energy service companies. 

During his career Mr. Rockwell has served in different capacities within the energy services industry and has focused on the evaluation and implementation of energy and water cost saving technologies, smart building energy optimization services, renewable energy systems, and demand side management.  He has worked for a number of private sector companies serving clients in the federal, state, municipal, and commercial sectors.    He holds a Bachelor in Chemical Engineering, from NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, and a Master’s degree from the University of Colorado’s Building Systems Engineering program.  He is also a registered professional engineer in multiple states.

In his role as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Daniel R Simmons leads EERE to achieve its vision of a strong and prosperous America powered by clean, affordable, and secure energy. He oversees technology development in the energy efficiency, renewable power and sustainable transportation sectors.

Mr. Simmons served as the Institute for Energy Research's Vice President for Policy, overseeing its energy and environmental policy work at the state and federal level. He previously served as director of the Natural Resources Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council, was a research fellow at the Mercatus Center, and worked as professional staff on the Committee on Resources of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Mr. Simmons is a graduate of Utah State University and George Mason University School of Law.

Anthony Spera is the Senior Director of Sales and Asset Acquisition for Energy Services at Con Edison Solutions, and is part of the Energy Services Senior Leadership team. He has strategic responsibility for all sales and the approach to sales in the Energy Services division. In addition, Mr. Spera is responsible for the acquisition of power assets for Con Edison Solutions.

Mr. Spera has more than 25 years of experience in the energy industry and has worked on energy savings projects involving various technologies. Mr. Spera has also worked with utility programs in multiple states, resulting in consumers receiving significant financial grants/incentives for upgrades to their facilities. His work with design/build concepts, energy savings performance contracting vehicles, utility privatization, and long term O&M agreements has given Mr. Spera broad experience in the implementation of energy savings projects and the introduction of new technologies and contract vehicles that drive energy efficiency and resiliency.

Colonel Nello Tortora joined Southland Energy as Director of Federal Programs in April 2013 after retiring from 27 years of service in the United States Army. As an Army combat engineer officer, Col. Tortora served all over the world in assignments of increasing responsibility from platoon leader to brigade commander. In his last assignment, he served as commander of the U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Huntsville, Alabama 2009-2012.

Col. Tortora previously commanded the New York District of the Corps from 2006-2009. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, the University of Texas Graduate School of Engineering, and the National Defense University.

Kevin Vaughn has nearly 30 years of experience working in the energy conservation industry and has worked on over 45 comprehensive federal Energy Savings Performance Contracts in his career. He has been with Schneider Electric since 2002 and has served as the Task Order Manager for many of Schneider Electric’s recent federal ESPC projects, including the first-ever Net Zero ESPC project for the GSA. Mr. Vaughn’s current responsibilities include developing customer relations and serving as the main contact for federal ESPC customers to ensure the proper implementation of comprehensive solutions and adherence to federal regulations and procurement methods. He is also responsible for leading negotiations and arranging financing for ESPC projects. Mr. Vaughn represents Schneider Electric with federal agencies and trade group relations in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Vaughn received an M.B.A. in Finance and Marketing from the University of Chicago, a professional degree in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University, and a B.A. in Physics with a minor in Philosophy from DePauw University.