Press Kit — Need an energy expert? EFI Foundation’s analysts can identify the opportunities in a low-carbon energy economy.

Ernest J. Moniz is the Founder and CEO of the EFI Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization supporting the transition to a low-carbon energy future.

Professor Moniz (pronounced MO-neez) served as the 13th U.S. Secretary of Energy from 2013-2017, where he advanced energy technology innovation, nuclear security and strategic stability, cutting-edge capabilities for the American scientific research community, and environmental stewardship. In that role, he strengthened the Department of Energy (DOE) strategic partnerships with its 17 national laboratories while producing energy policies that attracted bipartisan support. Since 2017, he has also served as Co-Chair and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Professor Moniz was a key architect of the Paris Agreement on climate change and Mission Innovation at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21). He has spearheaded international initiatives that placed energy, science, and technological innovation at the center of the global response to climate change.

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Moniz Bio

Joseph Hezir joined former Secretary of Energy Ernest J. Moniz and fellow Executive Vice President Melanie A. Kenderdine in founding the EFI Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization supporting the transition to a low-carbon energy future.

As an Executive Vice President, Hezir (pronounced HE-sher) is the lead on key EFI Foundation research projects including reports examining federal support for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) research technologies; the U.S. nuclear enterprise and its key role in national security, and white papers on the Department of Energy’s budget priorities and federal tax incentives for energy innovation.

Hezir served as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy from 2013 through 2017. As CFO, he led a 200-person organization responsible for the then $30 billion Department of Energy budget, and supervised strategic planning, programming, budget formulation, and budget execution.

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Hezir Bio

David Ellis is Senior Vice President of Policy Strategy & Outreach for the EFI Foundation, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit founded by former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz to accelerate the transition to an equitable, low-carbon energy economy.

In his tenure at the Foundation, Ellis has focused on ways to clearly communicate the challenges of climate change. He advises Moniz and the EFI Foundation senior leadership on partnerships, media opportunities, and business strategy.

He also leads the program to brief state and federal policymakers on the leading technological pathways to a low-carbon future. Since the Foundation’s inception, more than 30 U.S. Senators and 50 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have received private briefings. The organization’s leadership has testified before a dozen committees, including multiple appearances before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

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Ellis Bio

Alex Kizer is Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President at the EFI Foundation. He develops and manages projects on cross-cutting issues related to technology, policy, and innovation in energy sectors at home and abroad.

An expert in developing and managing major analytical initiatives, Kizer (pronounced KI-zer) supports funders and sponsoring organizations with advice on navigating the interaction between technology disruptions and legacy markets and systems.

At the Foundation, Kizer oversees qualitative and quantitative analysis for EFI Foundation reports, including “Optionality, Flexibility & Innovation: Pathways for Deep Decarbonization in California;’’ “Advancing the Landscape of Clean Energy Innovation,’’ for Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy; and “Investing in Natural Gas for Africans,’’ a project sponsored by the Africa50 infrastructure fund. He has also overseen white papers on blockchain technology applications for energy, an examination of the U.S. nuclear enterprise and the role it plays in national security, studies on large-scale carbon management, and a variety of budgetary analyses.

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Kizer Bio

Stephen D. Comello is Senior Vice President, Strategic Initiatives at the EFI Foundation and Co-Managing Director of the Energy Futures Finance Forum.

Comello previously served as a faculty member at the Stanford Graduate School of Business for over a decade, co-leading the Rapid Decarbonization Initiative.

With a 23-year career dedicated to scaling emerging energy and environmental technologies, Comello specializes in policy and business model innovations. His expertise spans techno-economic analysis, policy and project finance, corporate strategy in the energy transition, and open innovation. At Stanford, he held leadership roles in various research initiatives and industrial affiliate programs. He has authored numerous publications in energy policy, industrial organization, development economics, innovation management, and carbon accounting.

Stephen holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical and industrial engineering from the University of Toronto and a doctorate in civil and environmental engineering from Stanford University. Originally from Canada, he now resides in Washington, D.C.

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Dr. Madeline Schomburg’s research focuses on energy justice, examining access and inclusion in policy processes, and decision-making.

Most of her work has focused on domestic unconventional oil and gas development, investigating the role of interest groups in mobilizing constituents to participate in political processes, and the role of policy entrepreneurs in diffusing relevant policies throughout the United States. She is broadly interested in human-environment interactions and the ways in which people mobilize for change around environmental policy problems, particularly in the context of climate change. Her scholarship has appeared in Energy Research & Social Science and Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy.

As an assistant professor of environmental policy at Colorado State University, Schomburg collaborated with scholars from numerous institutions and with community partners to advance social science research in energy and the environment. At Colorado State University, she also served on the steering committee of the Center for Environmental Justice where she helped create new programs in environmental justice, built partnerships with grassroots environmental justice organizations, and secured the center’s first external grant.

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Bruce da Silva completed her doctorate in sustainable energy systems at Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa. She also holds a Master of Public Administration from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts in economics from the Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil.

Bruce da Silva is an experienced researcher with a demonstrated work history in the public and private sectors. She is skilled in energy policy, decarbonization of energy systems, energy transition, renewable energy, distributed energy resources, electric vehicles, new mobility technologies and services, and energy integration in Latin America.

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Prior to EFI Foundation, Jeong was a post-doctoral fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she researched sustainable infrastructure finance and a framework to scale up sustainable infrastructure investment in collaboration with Inter-American Development Bank, Harvard University, and Boston University. This research informed a variety of stakeholders through several publications, including Aligning G20 Infrastructure Investment with Climate Goals and the 2030 Agenda, which called upon the Group of 20 (G-20) leadership to align the infrastructure agenda with the 1.5°C target.

Jeong also spent eight years working for SK Innovation, a Seoul-based energy company. She developed corporate climate change strategies, coordinated across the business units to implement the strategies, and managed several low-carbon energy projects, such as establishing the company’s greenhouse gas inventory system and internal emission trading system, and supporting developing countries’ efforts to respond to climate change in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand.

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