Beth Crouchet, Director, Energy Markets & Resource Planning, Budderfly, Inc.

Dr. Gabriela Bunea is a leading innovator in the solar and energy industries, dedicated to creating world-changing technology that combines solar energy generation with sustainable building materials. As Chief Solar Innovation Officer at GAF Energy, Gabi spearheaded the research, development and deployment of Timberline Solar™, the groundbreaking nailable solar shingle that integrates seamlessly into traditional roofing. With over two decades of extensive technical and business experience, Dr. Bunea has navigated the full spectrum of innovation, from initial concept incubation in startups to large-scale development and deployment, solidifying her status as a recognized authority in her field. Her expertise is frequently sought after, leading to keynote addresses at prestigious events like PVSC - Puerto Rico, Distributech Smart Energy Summit, RE+ Northern California, and PV CellTech, as well as appearances on influential podcasts such as "Green Giants: Titans of Renewable Energy." Dr. Bunea's impressive portfolio includes over 100 patents, and numerous publications on solar cell materials and technologies. Dr. Bunea has won the Gold Stevie award for the Most Innovative Woman of the year in Technology and been recognized several times as one of the top 50 leaders of San Jose by Women we Admire, most recently recognized as Top 25 Chief Innovation Officers in 2025, firmly establishing her as a visionary in the renewable energy sector.

Nate Hua is a Senior Energy & Emerging Markets Manager at ecobee, where he drives growth and development of ecobee's energy services products in energy markets and beyond through business strategy initiatives, partnerships with energy providers, and market development. Nate's been supporting the clean energy transformation since 2020, having helped guide clients through complex energy infrastructure investment decisions and orchestrate grid services for distributed energy resources (DERs) in roles prior to ecobee and is deeply passionate about continuing to find holistic solutions to accelerate the transformation.

Shri Joshi is currently vice president of the Industrial and Infrastructure segment at Infineon Technologies. Shri is responsible for the sales, marketing and distribution. Previously, he was senior director of marketing for the division. Shri has over two decades of product marketing and management experience in Energy, Power, and Wireless communications. In his free time, he enjoys spending time motorcycling. He is trained as an Engineer with management education

Lindsey joined Austin Energy in 2013 and is currently the Demand Response and Technical Services Manager. She leads a team of demand response professionals and engineers to meet Austin Energy's Resource Generation Goal of 270 MW in demand response by 2035. She oversees commercial and residential demand response programs and the Resiliency as a Service offering. Over the years she has also overseen and helped deploy Austin Energy’s suite of customer facing EV programs including Power Partners EV, a managed charging program for residential and City of Austin fleet charging stations, EV360, a residential subscription rate for off-peak EV charging, and a fast-growing growing public charging network now at over 1,500 ports. Prior to joining Austin Energy, Lindsey was an Associate Environmental Planner at the City of Austin's Watershed Protection Department and a teacher based in Shanghai, China. Lindsey is an early EV adopter, white-paper author, and a frequently requested industry speaker.

Mary Nitschke is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Public Grid, a company dedicated to cleaning up the energy grid. She also contributes to the field as a featured author for YieldPRO magazine's "Energy Made Simple" column, writes for Genesis Dome, a Circular Economy Company. and is an advisor for WastexAI, an IoT Waste solution. Prior to her role at Public Grid, Mary served as the Chief Sustainability Officer at GreenT Climate Software, where she focused on creating software solutions to simplify sustainability practices for the multifamily industry. She was also the Vice President of Sustainability at RealPage, where she developed three successful, award-winning SaaS sustainability products, two of which used IoT technology. During her tenure, RealPage was honored with the EPA Partner of the Year award for three consecutive years. She also hosted podcasts and webinars to establish thought leadership in multifamily sustainability. Mary's career also includes serving as the Director of Ancillary Services at Prometheus Real Estate Group, Inc. In this position, she worked directly with vendors, clients, and property teams to reduce consumption, increase revenue, and ensure compliance with various state, county, and city regulations. She led the Prometheus Sustainability Committee, was a founding member and the first president of UMAdvisory, and established an EV Charging in Multifamily working group. She is a highly credentialed professional, holding two Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and an engineering certificate in Energy Resource Management from the University of California, Davis. Her numerous certifications include Google AI, Carbon Accounting from TCFD, ESG from BOMA, Sustainable Supply Chain Management from LUNDT University, and CSRD Fundamentals from the CSRD institute. She is also a LEED AP O&M and a TRUE Zero Waste Advisor. Mary was recognized as a 2024 top leader in technology by Parks Associates.

Daniel Richmond is the Senior Manager of EV and Solar Product Development for Green Mountain Energy. He is passionate (nay, evangelical!) about helping customers get solar panels on their roofs and EVs in their driveways, and has been working with EVs, renewables, and solar since 2011 (which is when he drove his first electric car). Originally from the Washington, DC area, he moved to Houston in 2004 to go to Rice, where he initially got into renewable energy and energy efficiency by writing a business plan for an Energy Services Company. Since then, he’s gotten his MBA from Tulane University (which he paid for partially by selling LED light bulbs) and now lives in Katy with his wife and two daughters (ages 8 and 6).

Mark is a senior portfolio manager with over 30 years of experience in electrical utility demand side management, specifically advanced technologies, integrated software solutions, and emerging innovations for customer demand flexibility. His current responsibilities include developing pilots and demonstrations of early-to-market consumer technologies for flexible end use resources and innovative cost-effective smart grid solutions. His current work includes deploying several studies to examine how both residential and large industrial and commercial customers can effectively engage in new forms of dynamic pricing and local grid interconnections for increased reliability and affordability.

Raiford Smith is the principal consultant for Avalon Energy Consulting, advising companies on data center infrastructure, analytics, energy efficiency, and transmission/distribution. Raiford began his career as a unionized call center clerk at Savannah Electric and Power Company and has spent over three decades since then in the electric, natural gas, and high-tech industries. Prior to his role at AES, Raiford led Google’s global energy, water and wastewater, economic and community development, and supply planning teams, managing over $1.2Bn OpEx and $15Bn CapEx budgets to help Google transition from 100% renewable energy to 24x7 carbon free energy. Additionally, he led the product and UX functions at Tapestry, Google X’s moonshot for the electric grid. Prior to his work at Google, Raiford held a wide variety of roles at other energy companies, including AES, CPS Energy, Duke Energy, Entergy, and the Southern Company. He has led initiatives that contributed hundreds of millions of dollars of recurring EBITDA, grew customer engagement, and improved service reliability through new customer products and services, analytics, smart grid, and distributed energy resources. His career has spanned a very diverse set of roles in legal, mergers and acquisitions, energy trading, transmission & distribution, product management, regulatory, information technology, and customer support. Raiford graduated from the University of Georgia with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, earned an MBA from the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia, earned a JD from the Charlotte School of Law, and received a business analytics certificate from Harvard University’s Business Analytics Program. Raiford is a licensed attorney (North Carolina), holds multiple patents for distributed computing at the grid edge, and has published numerous papers on the future of the electric industry, energy regulatory economics, and energy-related technology.

Anna Strehlau is a Business Development leader on a quest to improve, influence and disrupt markets by delivering customer-centric value propositions in the Energy and Sustainability Sectors. At Carrier, she leads an integrated team of Business Development, Sales, Marketing and Energy Policy professionals to position Carrier Energy, as a global leader of intelligent climate and energy solutions. Her expertise spans the Automotive, Mobility and Energy sectors, with over 20 years leading engineering, product development, innovation, strategy and consulting organizations at Schaeffler, BorgWarner, FEV and Honeywell. Anna joined Carrier Energy in 2024, an organic start-up business created to develop energy management solutions for our customers to help alleviate the demand on the grid as the world continues to electrify.

INDUSTRY EXPERTISE: Consumer electronics, mobility services and devices, connected health and wellness. Kristen Hanich heads Parks Associates' consumer electronics and mobility research, with expertise in other verticals including connected cars, mobile networking, healthcare, wellness, and independent living. She leads a mix of custom and syndicated research projects throughout the year, with a focus on major players and emerging trends. Kristen specializes in bridging the gap between data-driven and narrative approaches to understanding the consumer markets via a mix of qualitative and quantitative research approaches. Kristen has dual master's degrees in applied anthropology and public health from the Universities of North Texas in Denton and Fort Worth. She earned her BSc in health at the University of Texas at San Antonio and has a graduate certificate in Geographic Information Systems.

Daniel is responsible for smart home research involving market trend analysis, competitor and positioning assessments, technology evaluations, and forecasts of relevant industry metrics. Daniel is a market research industry veteran with 13 years of experience across multiple research types such as shopper insights, brand equity and brand health tracking, and customer experience. Daniel has also conducted research across multiple sectors such as consumer packaged goods, consumer electronics, specialty retail, and transportation, travel, and hospitality. Daniel has a BA in Sociology from the University of Texas at Arlington, with specializations in Research and Evaluation, Diversity, and Family and Gender Studies.

INDUSTRY EXPERTISE: Connected Health, Connected Home Technologies and Services, Connected Entertainment Products and Services. Jennifer manages the research department and Parks Associates' process for producing high-quality, relevant, and meaningful research. Jennifer also leads and advises on syndicated and custom research projects across all connected consumer verticals and guides questionnaire development for Parks Associates’ extensive consumer analytics survey program. Jennifer is a certified focus group moderator, with training from the Burke Institute. Jennifer earned her PhD in religion, politics, and society and an MA in church-state studies from Baylor University. She earned her BA in politics from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.

Jason Paris joined Parks Associates as an analyst studying international telephone, cable, and satellite providers and is now a member of the business development team. Jason graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BA in psychology and government. After working for the Texas House of Representatives, Jason spent the previous seven years in New York City working with portable and enterprise healthcare technologies.

Parks Associates mission is to help companies navigate the changing consumer technology landscapes through data-driven market insights, extensive consumer and industry intelligence, and executive conferences. With over two decades of dedication to the company, Elizabeth Parks, President and Chief Marketing Officer, has been instrumental in shaping its growth and success, along with the continued focus of delivering timely and quality industry and consumer insights on the broadband, entertainment, connected home and SMB industries. Elizabeth's commitment to Parks Associates' overarching mission is unwavering. Parks Associates provides clients with the most comprehensive consumer and industry research and analysis to empower businesses to make informed decisions in an ever-evolving landscape. Elizabeth's journey with Parks Associates began after graduating with a BA in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. She lives in Plano Texas with her husband and three children.