Speaker Bios
Tina Andolina is Chief of Staff for California State Senator Ben Allen. She has been with the Senator, serving as a Senior Policy Consultant and Legislative Director since 2015, advising the Senator on issues related to the environment, energy, natural resources, water, and climate change. Andolina previously served as director of legislation and regulation at the California Department of Pesticide Regulation under the Brown Administration and, prior to that, served as a legislative consultant for State Senator Lois Wolk. Before entering state service, she was an advocate, organizer, and lobbyist for several environmental nonprofit organizations working both in DC and Sacramento. Andolina worked on efforts to pass Federal Wilderness legislation, including the Big Sur Wilderness and Conservation Act of 2002 and later the Northern California Coastal Wild Heritage Wilderness Act of 2006. Upon coming to Sacramento, she was a lobbyist for the Coalition for Clean Air and the Planning and Conservation League.
Chief Bigelow began his CAL FIRE career in 2004 as a Fire Fighter I at the Ahwahnee station in the Madera-Mariposa-Merced Unit (MMU), where he spent five seasons. In 2009, he promoted to a Fire Apparatus Engineer at the Coarsegold Station, also in MMU. In 2013, Chief Bigelow promoted to Limited Term Fire Captain at the Columbia Air Attack Base in the Tuolumne-Calaveras Unit (TCU) working as the Air Tanker Base Manager. At the end of the 2013 fire season, he accepted a permanent Fire Captain position in MMU as the Pre-Fire Engineer. In 2017, he promoted to Battalion Chief as the Southern Region Pre-Fire Coordinator. In 2020, Frank then promoted to the Deputy Chief of the then-called Wildfire Prevention Engineering Division in the Office of the State Fire Marshal, where he oversaw five statewide programs. In 2021, he accepted a Staff Chief position in the newly created Community Wildfire Preparedness & Mitigation Division, overseeing eight statewide programs. Most recently, Chief Bigelow was the Assistant Deputy Director (ADD) of Community Wildfire Preparedness & Mitigation, the ADD of Fire Engineering & Investigations, and oversaw the division’s support services section.
Chief Bigelow was integral in the development of the Online Burn Permit process. In 2018, Chief Bigelow was a part of a small group who implemented the CALFIRS system. He also co-developed an application for field data collection on fuels reduction projects used by the Fuels Crews.
Chief Bigelow represents the department in various capacities. He is a Board of Directors member for the California Fire Safe Council and is a member of the newly created CAL POLY Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Fire Institute Steering Committee. Additionally, he chairs the CalMAPPER Steering Committee, serves on various Wildfire & Forest Resilience Taskforce working groups, and is part of the eGIS Committee, as well as many others. Chief Bigelow is also a State Fire Marshal instructor, and a California Specialized Training Institute (CSTI) instructor.
Mike Cayaban has over twenty years of civil litigation experience representing the State of California, state agencies and state employees in matters ranging from environmental protection and enforcement, condemnation, civil rights, personal injury and public sector labor law. He currently serves as supervisor of the Natural Resources Law Section in San Diego. The Natural Resources Law Section advises and represents California state agencies, boards, and commissions with responsibility for natural resources management and pollution control.
Sara A. Clark is a partner at Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP, a public interest law firm dedicated to representing non-profit organizations, Tribes, and public agencies, based in San Francisco. She has worked extensively with Tribes, Tribal organizations, land trusts, and prescribed burn associations to help implement beneficial fire projects and advance beneficial fire policy at the state and federal level. She is the lead author of the Good Fire reports for the Karuk Tribe and served as a subject matter expert on issues related to cultural burning and Tribal sovereignty in the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Save the Redwoods League.
Don Hankins is a professor of geography and environmental studies at California State University, Chico and field director for its ecological reserves. With expertise in pyrogeography, water resources, and conservation and as a Miwko traditional culture practitioner, Hankins is interested in Indigenous land stewardship practices to aid in conservation. His current research is on wildland fire with an emphasis on landscape-scale and prescribed and cultural burns; ecocultural restoration approaches to place; and policy. Internationally recognized for his work on Indigenous fire, Hankins is an advisor to the Indigenous Peoples Burning Network, co-lead of the Indigenous Stewardship Network, and a member of the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force executive committee, among other service.
Phillip Hoos is a Deputy Attorney General within the Natural Resources Law Section of the California Department of Justice. In his 10 years in this role, he has litigated numerous wildfire cases on behalf of various state agencies. Both through settlements and jury trials, Phil has successfully recovered from defendants the money expended by the State to extinguish wildfires and evacuate residents. In addition to litigation, Phil is a co-lead of NRLS’s fire practice group, which group seeks to help educate other deputy attorneys general on the latest developments in wildfire litigation.
Dave Jones is the 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 and that insurance losses and pricing can be reduced by nature-based mitigation.
Jones served as California’s Insurance Commissioner from 2011 through 2018, where he regulated the largest insurance market in the United States. He founded and chaired the Sustainable Insurance Forum (SIF), an international consortium 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, the first to conduct climate risk scenario analysis of insurers’ investment portfolios, and the first to ask insurance companies to divest from coal. Jones first recommended that California enact climate risk disclosure requirements for private companies and with his team at CLEE drafted the original version of SB 261 (Stern), California’s landmark climate risk disclosure law. Jones also led the team which placed the first ever insurance policy taking into account the risk reduction benefit of ecological forestry – a nature based approach to reducing wildfire risk.
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 also a member of the United Nations Forum on Insurance Transition (UNFIT) and a member of the expert group advising the United Nations on policies furthering the transition to net zero. His most recent publication, in the Yale Law Journal, is "The Uninsurable Future: The Climate Threat to Property Insurance and How to Stop It." Jones is a graduate of DePauw University (B.A.), Harvard Law School (J.D.), and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (MPP).
Heather Leslie was appointed Chief Counsel for the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety (Energy Safety) on April 23, 2025. From 2021 until her Energy Safety appointment, Leslie served as the Assistant General Counsel at the California Natural Resources Agency. From 2015-2021, she was a Deputy Attorney General at the California Department of Justice in the Environment Section. Leslie earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Tony Marino has served as the Deputy Director of the Electrical Infrastructure Directorate of the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety since March 2025. Before that, since July 2017, he was Executive Officer for the California Underground Safety Board, which facilitates enhances utility safety among contractors, other excavators, and utility operators through regulations, standards, education, accident investigation, and enforcement. From 2011 to 2017, Marino served as a legislative aide to California Assemblymember and then State Senator Jerry Hill and consultant for the Senate Subcommittee on Gas, Electric, and Transportation Safety. Marino holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Davidson College.
Paul Mason is Vice President for Policy and Incentives at Pacific Forest Trust. With 20 years of forest policy and legislative experience in Sacramento, he is a regular fixture in the State Capitol and state agencies. Driven by the urgency to restore and conserve forest structure and function at landscape scale, Paul is thrilled to be putting his Resource Policy degree to good use. A lover of rural California and wild places, when away from Sacramento Paul often visits the spectacular north coast and Klamath mountain region.
Alana Mathews was appointed Deputy Secretary of Law Enforcement and General Counsel at the California Environmental Protection Agency to serve as the chief legal advisor to the Secretary in implementing the agency’s mission to restore, protect and enhance the environment. In this role, Mathews provides oversight and direction on all legal matters and guides enforcement efforts across all environmental programs.
Mathews previously served on the executive team for the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office where she supervised various units and coordinated trainings and special projects. She also served as the director of policy, membership and training for the Prosecutors Alliance; chief consultant for the Climate Change Committee with the California State Assembly; and public advisor for the California Energy Commission, where she led implementation for SB 350 and developed the multi-agency Disadvantaged Communities Advisory Group. Mathews began her legal career as a deputy district attorney with the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office, trying more than 50 cases to verdict. She is an adjunct professor at University of Pacific, McGeorge School of Law.
David Neill has been Chief Counsel at the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services since 2024. He had been an Assistant Chief Counsel since 2021. Previously, he was Supervising Deputy Attorney General at the California Department of Justice for more than 15 years. He also served as an Attorney Investigator at the California Office of Legislative Counsel, Workplace Conduct Unit and Deputy Chief Counsel at the California Department of Human Resources. He was a Senior Associate at Littler Mendelson P.C. from 1997 to 2001.
Lenya Quinn-Davidson is the Fire Network Director for the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, where she leads a statewide team working on various facets of fire resiliency, from wildland fire management and the built environment to workforce development and community capacity. Over the last 15 years, Lenya’s work has focused in large part on the human connection with fire, and breaking down social, political, and cultural barriers to beneficial fire. Lenya has worked at various scales, including locally with private landowners and community members; at the state level, where she collaborates on policy, research, and training; and nationally/internationally, through her leadership on the Women-in-Fire Training Exchange (WTREX) Program. Lenya is passionate about using fire to inspire and empower people, from ranchers and scientists to agency leaders and young women, and everyone in between.
Jamie has been practicing natural resource and environmental law for over 11 years, advising multiple programs at both CAL FIRE and the Sierra Nevada Conservancy. Before becoming an attorney for the Office of the State Fire Marshal advising multiple pre-fire programs and Fire Engineering and Investigations, Jamie served as the CEQA attorney at CAL FIRE. He has also served as co-lead of working groups on both the Tree Mortality Task Force and the Forest Management Task Force. Jamie earned a Juris Doctor degree from the McGeorge School of Law, a Master of Arts in Elections and Campaign Management from Fordham University, and a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Fordham University.
Scott Stephens is interested in the interactions of wildland fire and ecosystems. This includes how prehistoric fires once interacted with ecosystems, how current wildland fires are affecting ecosystems, and how future fires and management will influence people and ecosystems. He is also interested in wildland fire and forest policy and how it can be improved to meet the challenges of the coming decades, both nationally and internationally. Working with Indigenous partners to learn how to steward ecosystems into the future with climate change is a key area of research.
Stephens has given testimony on fire and forest policy at the US House of Representatives, the White House, California Assembly and Senate, California Governor’s office, and served on the 2024 US Wildfire Commission. He is on the Board of Directors of the Climate Wildfire Institute and is one of the leaders of The Stewardship Project, which is a partnership of Indigenous people and western science to improve federal fire policy. He was selected in the Top 1% of Researchers Worldwide in 2024 and 2025 (https://clarivate.com/highly-cited-researchers/).
Michael Wara is Director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program and a senior research scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment as well as Senior Director for Policy at the Sustainability Accelerator within the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Wara’s legal and policy scholarship focuses on wildfire, climate mitigation, energy innovation, and regulated industries. He collaborates with economists, engineers and scientists in research on the design and evaluation of technical and regulatory solutions to society's climate and energy challenges.
Wara has served as a Wildfire Commissioner for California; as a member of the California Catastrophe Council, the oversight body of the California Wildfire Fund; as a consultant to the Senate pro Tem on wildfire issues; and as a consultant to CPUC and OEIS on utility wildfire risk management. He has served on multiple National Academy of Sciences and California Council on Science and Technology reports. He is also a member of the Tamalpais Design Review Board. Prior to joining Woods, Wara was an associate professor at Stanford Law School and an associate in Holland & Knight’s government practice.
Frank Weirich is an associate professor in the School of Earth and Environmental Science (SEES) and a research engineer in IHR Hydroscience and Engineering at the University of Iowa. Much of his research and consulting experience has focused on fire-related floods and debris flows in California. The work has ranged from field experiments with prescribed fires and debris flows to post-event evaluation of catastrophic events such as the Montecito Debris Flows to the question of recovery rates and related risk reduction.
Tom Welsh joined the California Earthquake Authority in 2019, initially as General Counsel, quickly taking on additional roles as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Legal & Compliance Officer. Tom was appointed Chief Executive Officer in 2024. As CEO, Tom oversees both the operation of California’s largest privately funded residential earthquake insurance business, which protects around one million California homes against the peril of earthquake damage, and CEA’s activities as the appointed Administrator of the California Wildfire Fund. The Wildfire Fund, created in 2019 under AB 1054, insures California’s three largest investor-owned electric utility companies for liabilities arising from utility-caused wildfires. Prior to joining CEA, Tom was a partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, an international law firm. His insurance regulatory practice focused on providing compliance advice and solutions to a wide array of clients, including emerging technology companies bringing innovative solutions to the insurance marketplace. He also worked for financial sector clients on public finance transactions, insurance related investments, the insurance components of complex securitization transactions, as well as autonomous vehicle development and regulation. For nearly 30 years, Tom served as the primary outside counsel to the California Insurance Commissioner’s Conservation & Liquidation Office, leading efforts to protect consumers when California insurance companies are financially impaired or fail.