Episode 1.14 On Designing for Change & Compassion with Ahlmahz Negash, PhD

Power Flow

Here on Power Flow we do a lot of thinking about the future of energy. For Ahlmahz Negash, PhD, it's what she does every day for the City of Tacoma in her job as a long range resource planner. She's helping the city not only plan for clean sources of energy (which they already have in spades) but also plan for electrification - enabling vehicles, buildings, and industrial processes to move to those clean sources of energy.

As a futurist, Ahlmahz is passionate about designing for agility and adaptability and counting on the fact that we'll have new knowledge available in the future and should expect our solutions to evolve along with that knowledge.
Ahlmahz is also a self-proclaimed "heart and mind" person and encourages us all to leverage the power of compassion to motivate us to create impact and build a better world.

Note: We discuss Episode 1.10 with Janette Freeman on the need to make personal change to find more impactful work.

Quotables

"We don't have any shortage of technology or economists, but what we could use a whole lot of are people committed to humanity, who want to see a future for everybody and not just themselves.”

“Can costs become a constraint and not just the objective all the time?"

"There is no greater compassion than worrying about the people that are going to be here that you'll never meet."

"We're sitting on this stockpile of clean energy. The best way we can move the city forward in its climate action plans is to electrify."

“It’s critical that we get a lot more input from the folks that are actually being impacted by the decisions that the utility makes.”

All above quotes by Ahlmahz Negash

This week’s guest

Ahlmahz Negash is currently a Senior Power Analyst at Tacoma Power in the Long-Term Resource Planning and Analysis group. Her role encompasses a wide range of activities including, leading cross functional teams, resource modeling, evaluating policy impacts, and developing innovative demand-side solutions.

Prior to joining Tacoma Power, Ahlmahz was a research fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway. She received her BS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington in 2010 and 2015, respectively.

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