Speaker Bios
Plenary Speaker
Christopher Cabaldon was elected to the California State Senate in 2024. Before his election to the Senate, he served two decades as Mayor of West Sacramento in Yolo County. The former state highway between Capitol Mall and Highway 50/Business 80 was renamed as the Christopher Cabaldon Parkway in honor of the comprehensive and profound community transformation he shepherded during his long tenure. West Sacramento won the national designation as America’s Most Livable Small City. It was the first city in the nation to implement universal preschool, college savings accounts for all kindergarteners, paid internships for high school students in college-and-career pathways, free community college and automatic college admission letters to every local graduating senior. One of the state’s first ProHousing cities and top producers of affordable housing, West Sacramento under Cabaldon’s leadership led the nation on innovations in personal mobility and next-gen transit, urban farms, flood protection, and urban revitalization.
An appointed education and environment official for five governors of both political parties, Senator Cabaldon represented California on the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education prior to his election to the Senate. He served previously as vice chancellor of the California Community Colleges and director of the higher education committee for the State Assembly. He was national president for Asian and Pacific Americans in Higher Education, and president of the Linked Learning Alliance. President Obama appointed him to the national board, led by then-Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden, to launch and advance America’s College Promise by making community college free in hundreds of cities and states, just as he had done in West Sacramento.
As chair of the Sacramento region’s metropolitan planning organization and its transportation committee, his pioneering work on integrating transportation, land use, environmental justice, housing, air quality, and climate change won numerous national awards, and became the basis for some of California’s most sweeping transportation and climate reforms of the past two decades. He served on the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board and the state Delta Protection Commission.
Video Address
Since becoming California’s 34th Attorney General, Rob Bonta has taken on the biggest challenges of our time — gun violence, fentanyl, the lawlessness of the second Trump Administration, attacks on healthcare, deception peddled by Big Oil, the state’s housing crisis, and greedy corporate giants. Before serving as Attorney General, Bonta spent more than eight years serving in the State Assembly, where he authored nation-leading legislation to make our communities safer and more affordable, and to ensure government institutions work for all people. Prior to serving in the Assembly, Attorney General Bonta worked as a Deputy City Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco. Bonta was sworn in on April 23, 2021, becoming the first person of Filipino descent to serve as California Attorney General. Born in Quezon City, Philippines to a native Filipina mother and a father born and raised in California, Bonta immigrated to California as an infant.
Panelists
Ken Alex is the director of Project Climate at the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and Environment, focusing on the most promising climate solutions and moving them more quickly to policy and scale. From 2011 to 2018, Ken was a Senior Policy Advisor to Governor Jerry Brown, the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, and the Chair of the Strategic Growth Council, focusing on climate, energy, environment, and land use issues. Before joining the Governor’s Office, Ken was the Senior Assistant Attorney General heading the environment section of the California Attorney General’s Office. From 2000 to 2006, Ken led the California Attorney General’s energy task force, investigating price and supply issues related to California’s energy crisis. Ken is a graduate of Harvard Law School and holds a B.A. in political theory from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Vikram Amar returned to UC Davis in 2023 after serving for eight years as the dean and the Iwan Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign College of Law. Directly before that he was a Professor and (for seven years) the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at King Hall.
Amar is one of the most eminent and frequently cited authorities in constitutional law, federal courts, and civil procedure. He has produced several books and more than 100 scholarly articles in leading law reviews and legal compilations. He writes a biweekly column on constitutional matters for Justia.com and is a co-author (with Akhil Reed Amar) of a biweekly column for Scotusblog.com. He is a frequent commentator on national (and local) TV and radio, and has penned dozens of op-ed pieces for major newspapers and magazines.
Dr. Michelle Buffington is Director of the Mobile Source Control Division. She leads her team in developing and implementing light-, medium, heavy-duty- and off-road regulations, fleet rules, and mobile source incentive programs. In her almost 19 years at the CARB she has developed innovative fuels policies, spearheaded the development of key incentive programs, and shaped mobile source policies that protect public health while growing California’s economy.
Hon. Steven S. Cliff, Ph.D. was appointed by CARB as Executive Officer in Summer 2022. As Executive Officer, Cliff works with the Board to enact programs to reduce air and climate pollution. He oversees the work of approximately 1,800 employees and a budget of $2.7 billion.
Dr. Cliff was most recently the 16th Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), where he oversaw the nation’s vehicle safety agency that sets vehicle safety standards, identifies safety defects and manages recalls, and educates Americans to help them travel safely. NHTSA’s work also includes establishing fuel economy regulations and helping facilitate the testing and deployment of advanced vehicle technologies including Automated Driving Systems. Cliff was appointed to NHTSA by President Biden in January 2021 and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2022.
Cliff brings an extensive scientific and regulatory background to his leadership role at CARB. Prior to his appointment to NHTSA, Cliff served as a Deputy Executive Officer at CARB, where he first joined the staff in 2008 as an Air Pollution Specialist. Since then, he held a variety of positions at the agency, eventually overseeing its climate program. From 2014 to 2016, Cliff was appointed by then Governor Brown to the California Department of Transportation as Assistant Director for Sustainability. He returned to CARB in 2016 when Governor Brown appointed him senior advisor to CARB’s Chair.
Cliff played an active role at the University of California, Davis for nearly two decades. In 2001, he joined the school’s Department of Applied Sciences as a research professor, later becoming affiliated with the school’s Air Quality Research Center. Through the years, he has supported independent air quality and climate research programs while balancing his time at CARB and Caltrans, including being an approved program coordinator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Advanced Light Source.
Cliff received a bachelor’s degree and doctorate in chemistry from the University of California, San Diego. He then completed a postdoc on atmospheric sciences at the University of California, Davis’ Department of Land, Air and Water Resources.
Ian Fein is a Deputy Solicitor General in the California Department of Justice. Previously, he served as Senior Counsel for Litigation Strategy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Fein clerked for Justice Elena Kagan, D.C. Circuit Judge Judith Rogers, and Ninth Circuit Judge William Fletcher. He has a J.D. and B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and has served as an adjunct lecturer at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and UC Law San Francisco.
Roland Hwang is the Policy Director for ITS-Davis and the co-director of the Sustainable Freight Center. In his roles, he helps the institute to increase the policy impact of its research. He consults with policy makers in the field—government, industry, and NGOs—to identify the key policy questions they are facing where new analysis can help improve the decision-making process. This position helps to better disseminate ITS-Davis’ ongoing research to policymakers, as well as develop new research directions to keep the institute on the cutting edge of policy research. Roland is an expert on clean vehicle and fuels technologies and policies, energy demand forecasting, and air pollution regulation. Some of the projects Roland currently works on include supply side regulations, sustainable freight, EV grid readiness, battery end of life management, and advancing transportation electrification policies in the Global South.
Roland has over 30 years of research and policy making experience in government, NGOs, and climate philanthropy. Prior to joining ITS Davis in 2024, Roland was the director of the Climate and Clean Energy program at the Heising-Simons Foundation Program. He also previously directed the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate & Clean Energy Program and worked for the Union of Concerned Scientists directing their Transportation program. He has served on numerous advisory panels and committees, including the U.C. Davis Institute of Transportation Board of Advisors, the Pacific Gas & Electric Sustainability Advisory Board, the 50×50 Transportation Initiative Commissioner, the California Plug-in Electric Vehicle Collaborative, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Fuel Economy, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Barriers to Electric Vehicle Deployment and the U.S. EPA Mobile Source Technical Review Subcommittee. Roland was also part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He has worked with Director Sperling and ITS-Davis researchers since the early 1990s. Roland holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from UC Davis, and a master’s degree in Public Policy from UC Berkeley.
Theodore McCombs has been in the California Department of Justice’s Natural Resources Law Section since 2018 and leads the office’s current work on federal vehicle regulations and federal climate funding litigation. Prior to his work in California, he was an Assistant Attorney General in the Colorado Department of Law and an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. He regularly leads or co-leads multistate coalitions of States, including in American Public Health Ass’n v. EPA, the challenge to EPA’s rescission of the 2009 endangerment finding for vehicle greenhouse gas emissions. This past June, he co-argued the preliminary injunction in Washington v. U.S. Dept. of Transportation that unlocked $1 billion in suspended National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure funds. In 2024, he was a Supreme Court Fellow at the National Association of Attorneys General in Washington, D.C. during the U.S. Supreme Court’s eventful October 2023 term.
Kevin Poloncarz leads Covington’s Environmental and Energy Practice Group and focuses on state and federal climate policy. He convenes the Clean Energy Group and has represented its members in several cases in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. Supreme Court over the past decade concerning EPA’s authority to promulgate strong standards to address carbon emissions from power plants and cars and trucks under the Clean Air Act. He has also taught Climate Law and Policy at Stanford Law School in 2023, 2024 and 2025. He is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Ridgeline Center for Law and Policy and on the advisory boards of the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program and NYU Law School Institute for Policy Integrity.
Abigail Ramsden joined Rivian in 2025 as Senior Public Policy Manager for the Western United States. In this role, she develops strategies and relationships that accomplish Rivian’s mission and business goals and support the adoption of electric vehicles. Previously, she served as a Project Director on the Climate team with The Nature Conservancy’s California chapter. There, she engaged regulators, elected officials, community leaders, and partner organizations to transform state land use and infrastructure, helping people and landscapes adapt to climate-related challenges. She began her career as an attorney in private practice, representing project proponents in environmental and land use regulatory and permitting processes. Abigail graduated from the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, and Williams College. She is an avid outdoorswoman and traveler.
Craig Holt Segall is a Senior Advisor to CLEE. Craig is also an Honorary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh Law School, and a Senior Advisor to NYU Law’s State Energy & Environmental Impact Center. An independent consultant, he also advises multiple U.S. foundations and NGOs, including the Federation of American Scientists, on climate and democracy issues, and publishes regularly.
Craig was previously Deputy Executive Officer and Assistant Chief Council of the California Air Resources Board, and an attorney for the Sierra Club. He also previously advised the Falkland Islands Government on environment and energy policy, and is an advisor to Breathe Mongolia, that country’s leading air quality NGO. He clerked for Judge Marsha S. Berzon of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and is admitted to practice in multiple federal circuits and district courts.
Craig received an AB in Biology (Ecology & Evolution) and in Environmental Studies, all with honors, from the University of Chicago, and a JD (Order of the Coif) from Stanford Law School.
Commissioner Nancy Skinner is serving her first term on the California Energy Commission (CEC). Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Skinner in January 2025 to serve as the CEC’s engineer/scientist member. She was a state senator at the California State Senate from 2016 to 2024 and an assemblymember at the California State Assembly from 2008 to 2014. She also served on the Berkeley City Council from 1984 to 1992. From 2015 to 2016, Skinner was a senior advisor at the Energy and Efficiency Institute at the University of California, Davis, and a lecturer at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.
She has worked on climate and sustainability issues for a number of organizations, including the United States director at The Climate Group; international director and United States director for the ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability Climate Protection Campaign, and executive director at ICLEI-US Local Governments for Sustainability. Skinner was the executive director of the Graduate Assembly at UC Berkeley and was a writer/researcher at Earthworks Press. She earned a bachelor of science degree in conservation and resource studies and a master of arts in education from UC Berkeley. She lives in Berkeley.