Staff

Heather Reams
Heather has been Chair of National Clean Energy Week since 2017. She is a Western Caucus Foundation advisory board member and serves on the board of directors for the American Conservative Coalition. She is a frequent commentator on the politics and policy of clean energy and the environment having been featured on MSNBC, NPR, and Newsmax TV, and in The Washington Post, Washington Examiner, Politico, Newsweek, Time, Roll Call, The Hill, Morning Consult, and The Atlantic, among others. She is a regular contributor to Real Clear Energy.
Heather has nearly three decades of experience in public affairs and advocacy and has held a number of senior nonprofit positions. Prior to her non-profit work, she spent a decade at several top D.C.-based public affairs firms. She started her career as a staffer in the offices of Senator Bob Smith (R-NH) and Congressman Gerald Weller (R-IL11), and earlier as an intern for Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA) while pursuing her degree. A graduate of the University of Washington with a degree in Political Science, Heather is active in Republican local and state affairs in her home state of Virginia, where she resides with her husband, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, and their two school-aged children.

Amy Farrell
Amy is recognized in Washington DC and nationally as an energy and regulatory policy expert, strategist, and influential advocate. She has spent her entire career working at the intersection of government and energy industry development – she knows how government policy gets made and how to influence it; and she understands how government policy can impact the energy development landscape, industry bottom lines, and ultimately consumer pocketbooks.
Having held positions in the White House Economic Council, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), she has guided the development of energy and environmental policy at the highest levels of government. Amy marries this experience with a successful career building and managing advocacy teams and leading energy industry efforts to shape government policy and public perception to enable energy deployment.
Most recently, she was senior vice president of government and public affairs for American Clean Power (formerly the American Wind Energy Association), leading and overseeing the research, policy, regulatory, legislative and public affairs functions. Upon arriving at AWEA, Amy led an effort to establish Board-level priorities and a multi-year strategic plan and made organizational and investment changes, elevating the industry’s advocacy capabilities to better meet the needs of the maturing wind industry. She broke down silos and led the organizations’ crosscutting advocacy efforts during a period a growth in industry influence and deployment and delivered multiple state, federal and regional industry-priority policy wins.
Prior to AWEA, Amy led efforts of the U.S. natural gas industry to boost demand by influencing electricity market design and LNG export policy, first as Vice President for Market Development at America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) and later as Senior Director for Market Development at the American Petroleum Institute (API), following the merger of the two organizations. Her focus on market development came about when ANGA’s CEO tapped Amy to redefine the organization’s mission, establish consensus industry goals, develop a strategic advocacy plan and direct the functional group leading the effort. Prior to that, Amy was Vice President for Regulatory Affairs at ANGA, and led policy development and regulatory advocacy to ensure companies could develop natural gas resources. Amy’s first position in the private sector was at ExxonMobil where she worked as a corporate issues advisor on their government and public affairs team.
Amy has a Bachelor of Arts from Illinois Wesleyan University and a Master of Public Affairs from Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

Shawn Affolter
Since 2011, Shawn worked for U.S. Senator John Hoeven (R-ND). In this capacity, Shawn helped advance key energy priorities including infrastructure policies, public-private research partnerships, advanced energy technology initiatives, and federal permitting reform. His work primary focused on the Senate Energy and Appropriations Committees, where he helped manage oversight and budget hearings, legislative mark-ups, agency nominations, and funding requests.
Mr. Affolter is a native of North Dakota and graduate of North Dakota State University where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in economics and political science.

Evan Dixon
He previously served as a press secretary and digital director for U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who helmed the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee and the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. As press secretary, Evan helped develop a media strategy, crafting messaging and organizing videos, graphics, and digital campaigns for major legislative accomplishments, including the Opioid Crisis Response Act, the Music Modernization Act, the FUTURE Act, and the Great American Outdoors Act. While working on Capitol Hill, Evan was elected by his peers to serve as president of the U.S. Senate Press Secretaries Association (SPSA).
Before his time in the U.S. Senate, Evan worked as a booking producer for Chuck Todd, NBC News’ political director and moderator of Meet the Press (MTP) and MTP Daily. He also worked in NBC News’ Washington Bureau as the weekend White House producer and the White House travel pool producer—traveling with President Obama to report for all major television news networks.
To start his career, Evan served as a legislative aide to then Texas State Sen. Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock) following his role as the deputy communications director for former U.S. Representative Heather Wilson’s (R-N.M.) campaign for U.S. Senate in New Mexico.
Evan grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and graduated with honors from Texas Tech University, where he studied broadcast journalism and business administration.

Christine Harbin
Christine (Chrissy) Harbin joins CRES as the Vice President of External Affairs, where she advances policy priorities by cultivating strategic partnerships on and off Capitol Hill.
Prior to joining CRES, she managed stakeholder engagement for the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM) as Acting Senior Vice President for External Engagement and Acting Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Initiatives for EXIM’s Program on China and Transformational Exports. Previously, she held similar responsibilities at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental and External Affairs.
Previous to her administration experience, Christine led the federal policy engagement and coalition efforts of Americans for Prosperity, a nationwide grassroots organization, as Vice President of External Affairs. Before then, she held economic policy roles at the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Missouri-based think tank, and the White House National Economic Council during the George W. Bush administration. She holds bachelor’s degrees in economics, mathematics, and French from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Wisconsin MBA Consortium.

Ewelina Czapla

Tiffany Koch

Rebecca Lorenzen

John Nagle

Spencer Talley

Jonny Lobeck

Elizabeth Daniels

Ashlie Dolce

Benjamin Sumner
CRES Forum Policy Fellow

George David Banks

Marty Hall
Prior to his joining the committee, he was Senior Vice President and Chief of Staff at Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of America’s leading companies. As a member of the senior executive team, Hall was active in formulating, planning, and implementing the Business Roundtable agenda.
Before Business Roundtable, Hall was a vice president at FirstEnergy, one of the nation’s largest investor-owned utility companies. He joined the company in 2009 after leaving the White House at the end of the Bush Administration. During his tenure, he managed several corporate groups, including the environmental department; energy policy; advanced technologies group; and federal affairs. He served on a year-long special assignment as co-lead of the merger integration group tasked with developing integration plans for a multi-billion-dollar merger. The integration group was comprised of twelve teams and over five hundred employees.
Previously, Hall served in senior positions in both the White House and United States Senate. A top energy and environmental advisor to President George W. Bush, he was Chief of Staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Prior to the White House, Hall was Majority Deputy Staff Director for the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Hall began his professional career in the private sector working for a joint venture focusing on mergers and acquisitions.
Hall is a graduate of Northwestern University where he played football for the Wildcats.
Senior Advisor

Sen. Kelly Ayotte
Board

James Dozier

Tom King
With more than thirty years experience in finance and energy, Mr. King has completed more than $25 billion of equity and debt investments across six continents acting both in a proprietary capacity and for many of the world’s most prominent energy and infrastructure companies. He has provided path-finding leadership in structured debt financings leading to solar energy ABS and was an early investor in and proponent of PACE financing. Mr. King recently launched and serves as President of the Borincana Foundation (www.fundacionborincana.org), an energy infrastructure non-profit and think tank for Puerto Rico. Mr. King is also Managing Partner of CrossRiver Capital and was a Founding Partner of US Renewables Group.

Carla Tully
Carla Tully is CEO and Co-Founder of Earthrise Energy, which unlocks the value of existing infrastructure to accelerate the transformation of the US electricity sector. Carla is a 20-year energy executive and business leader who brings the diverse perspectives of a sponsor, lender, operator, developer, and investor to the challenges of decarbonizing the grid. Carla’s previous roles include Executive Vice President of MAP Energy, a private energy investment firm with over $2B under management and President of AES UK & Ireland, with responsibility for 2GW of generating capacity and new business growth, including the introduction of utility-scale energy storage.

Catrina Rorke
Ms. Rorke has been recognized by E&E News, The Hill, and National Journal as an energy policy leader, and serves on the boards of several policy-focused organizations. Ms. Rorke served as a Presidential Management Fellow at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, as well as a Legislative Assistant for former U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC), helping him craft the first Republican-sponsored carbon tax bill.
Ms. Rorke received her Bachelor of Science in Public Health from the University of North Carolina and Master of Public Administration from Columbia
University.
