When we last spoke with Kira Lawrence, more than two years ago, she was taking a sabbatical from her tenured faculty position to work within New Jersey's Division of Clean Energy at the state’s Board of Public Utilities to try to make more direct impact on the climate crisis. Her time there made her think at length about how to best leverage her time and expertise for things she thinks are important. Find out how leadership is rarely about having the answers but motivating people from diverse backgrounds to take on the gnarly questions.
When we last spoke with Kira Lawrence, more than two years ago, she was taking a sabbatical from her tenured faculty position to work within New Jersey's Division of Clean Energy at the state’s Board of Public Utilities to try to make more direct impact on the climate crisis. Her time there made her think at length about how to best leverage her time and expertise and realized that—right now—she needs to be outside academia to have a chance to making the immediate impact she seeks. What she learns now about the skills necessary in the future, will hopefully help her return to higher education down the road to develop more people into the agents of change our planet needs. This is similar to the work she is doing to back others in the public sphere facing the broader topics of community diversity and equity.
In this episode, find out from Kira how leadership is rarely about having the answers but motivating people from diverse backgrounds to take on the gnarly questions…on Roads Taken Revisited with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode’s Guest
Kira Lawrence is currently senior policy advisor for the board of public utilities for the State of New Jersey.
For Kira’s first appearance on Roads Taken, listen to Better Environments.
Kira Lawrence: I am in a community of scientists who I think share this same weight of knowing what the future looks and feeling like we are not able to make the world get on the right pathway. So working for the state government in New Jersey on clean energy has been cathartic in that way.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: When we last spoke with Kira Lawrence, more than two years ago, she was taking a sabbatical from her tenured faculty position to work within New Jersey's Division of Clean Energy at the state’s Board of Public Utilities to try to make more direct impact on the climate crisis. Her time there made her think at length about how best to leverage her time and expertise for things she thinks are important. Find out how leadership is rarely about having the answers but rather motivating people from diverse backgrounds to take on the gnarly questions...on today's Roads Taken, with me Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today, I'm here on a special Roads Taken Revisited with Kira Lawrence, with whom we spoke a little while ago in a slightly different configuration of life and focus, but only slightly because I think there was a moment right after we spoke that kind of tipped off this new phase. So we're so excited to have Kira with us today. Kira, thanks so much for kind of catching us up.
KL: My pleasure. Thanks for having me back.
LJR: So the first time we did all of that, like who were you and all of that. So we kind of know who you had been at Dartmouth. And we also learned kind of some passions, both from a teaching academic side and a real world side. So talk me through what's been up for you.
LJR: So I think I'll start with my profession, where we were last time. I had been a tenured full professor endowed chair at Lafayette College, was the department head right up until when I did this science and politics fellowship with the state of New Jersey to work on clean energy and the fossil to clean transition. That inspired me to take a leave of absence from Lafayette to spend more time working on clean energy specifically, and I think we talked several months into my two year leave of absence. So I have been working for New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities Division of Clean Energy since our last conversation. And, in January of 24, this year, I decided to leave my academic position to work full time for the New Jersey state government and have a little bit different role for them. I'm transitioning to becoming what's called the senior policy advisor for the board of public utilities. But that's a major life pivot for me.
And it was not an easy decision to make, but I think, based upon our last conversation, there are a lot of things that were pushing me in this direction. It was a tough decision because there are a lot of things about my working life as an academic that were a good fit for how I thought I'd like to be situated in the world. An enormous amount of autonomy. I hadn't answered to anybody or punched a clock in 20 years. An enormous amount of flexibility, especially as the department head figuring out, you know, what courses I would teach and what time and what the nature of my research program would be. An enormous amount of certainty. Once you're tenured, you have a pretty clear pathway through retirement. And a lack of bureaucracy. So, you know, all of those things. And I think the other thing about my job as an academic was: a good portion of it was in the classroom, but there was also time doing research, time traveling to conferences and working in my research lab. And so there was a rhythm that was not very desk job oriented. And all of those things, and I'd say this for folks who are trying to figure out what their life path is right out of college, you'd start figuring out like, well, what do I like or what I not like about this opportunity? I didn't love sitting at a desk. I liked having a lot of flexibility. I liked being the, you know, decision maker about what directions I wanted to head. So all of those things were a good match for me from an academic standpoint. None of those things are part of the job that I just decided to take.
But here's the punchline is that I think we talked about this in my first interview as a central theme of my lived experience is this inherent restlessness that I had had about, you know, what is my path and how do I fit into the world and wanting to serve, wanting to leave it better than I found it. And in the last couple of decades as a climate scientist, this deep ethical burden of knowing and being able to see into the future, not the specific events, but knowing the myriad adverse impacts that are in store for human societies, you know, from the fires and floods, droughts, heat waves that we're already watching happen in real time to even more dramatic tipping points of, you know, food availability and rising sea levels…things that we call in climate sciences “singularities,” right? You go over that thing and you don't get to come back from it. So I just have had this undercurrent and I am, you know, in a community of scientists of all manner of people who I think share this same weight of knowing what the future looks like and feeling like we are not able to, you know, make the world get on the right pathway.
So working for the state government in New Jersey on clean energy has been cathartic in that way, right? I am actually doing things that are going to mitigate the climate crisis and that voice, that ethical voice that has been in the background for me in a persistent and insistent way for decades, that voice is now quiet.
LJR: That's great.
KL: And that, and that turns out for me is more important than all of the other things that I, you know, value in a working experience. So yeah, I've made this dramatic choice. Who in their right mind gives up a tenured full professorship and endowed chair, you know? But it's a chance to work in a very hands-on way on the thing that I think is most important to the future of human societies.
You know, New Jersey alone is not going to solve the climate crisis. New Jersey and New York and Massachusetts and California, who are, you know, states leading the charge in the U. S. and other states are also making sound progress, right? If we all start to figure out how to solve these seemingly intractable problems, then we build a road map. And boy, are we going to need that road map as the climate crisis deepens and dawning of what we're up against starts to happen all of everywhere. I think I feel inspired to work with a group of people who, they're not, they don't come from a climate science background, but they similarly have this commitment to getting to a better future and to getting to, you know, to implementing clean energy policy so that we can move away from fossil fuels and so that we can mitigate the climate crisis right now.
I'm an important cog in a really important wheel. I think long term, and I don't know exactly what the time scale is on this. I had talked last time about the importance of a role for academia. And I still think that that is true, that we need to be more applied in some of the, you know, educational training that we offer to students because once this becomes real for everybody—meaning not just you're watching the news and it's 110 degrees in Arizona, right? Or there's fires that are burning, you know, towns in Hawaii or name, you know, your town out west and heat waves and air quality in New York is the worst on record because there are fires in Canada. Once all of that starts to become, you know, part of the understood need for change and how we actually organize our societies and how we get our energy, we're going to need an army of people to do that work.
And we already, I think, in New Jersey and in, other places have some critical gaps in workforce development that we're seeking to fill even at the beginning of states working on trying to solve this problem, states and governments, and even industry working on trying to solve this problem. So, where I am right now is working for the state and happy to do a job with a very committed team, and I'll talk more about that in a minute.
And I don't know the time frame of this, but longer term I think I'd like to get back to academia. But in a university setting, and this is something that has sort of come with clarity to me over the past couple of years, I thought I'd go back to Lafayette and do what I'm about to describe to you. In the past couple of years, understanding more clearly what the skill sets and what the challenges are, what the jobs are like. I think the way to optimize the training is to start at the master's degree level. And Lafayette's an undergraduate only institution. While there are some exceptional undergrads who could do this project management work—’cause a lot of what we do is collaborative interdisciplinary team problem solving—it would be a stretch for, I think, a lot of folks just out of undergrad to step into those roles. So if we're trying to optimize the throughput of individuals with the right skill sets, I'm now convinced that doing it at a graduate level is the best place to start. So that meant that going back to Lafayette to try and translate what I knew wasn't the best pathway to get to where I think I could do the most good.
And I have a lot more to learn, even as I do this work for the state of New Jersey. It's a…wow is this an incredible learning experience? So the pivot for me, from I think when we talked last, is I had been mostly leveraging my scientific and environmental science skills as part of mostly the offshore wind team. The pivot to becoming Senior Policy Advisor is to expand my portfolio to more renewables. So I can have a better sense of what are the critical skill sets for each of these different subparts of the portfolio of clean energy. What do you need to know to be able to do that kind of work? And then the next step would be thinking about how you design an educational program that would allow students to gain those skills And then, you know, probably internships would be involved, a pipeline into the actual work of the clean energy transition.
So, that's a hope for future outcome. You know, there are a number of higher educational institutions that are starting or have already started climate and energy schools and, you know, are hiring faculty into those opportunities. I would, in the future, hope to find a way to get to one of those programs and bring what I know from not only my training as an academic designing curricula and delivering content, but then the work that I had done for the state of New Jersey across years’ worth of time in the midst of the clean energy transition in this state. So that's what I think the arc looks like from here.
The work that I'm doing at present is by far the most challenging thing I have ever done and that's because of I think some things that we talked about last time. None of anything is set up for this transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. The technology is progressing and we have a lot of good technological tools, probably not all the tools that we ultimately need to get to a 100 percent clean society in every way, right?
There's some really hard problems to solve, like airplanes and cement and steel manufacturing, to give a few examples. There are smart people who are working on those problems, but I think the other piece that I hadn't appreciated—and we talked a little bit about this last time—is that none of the rules are set up for, you know, the way in which clean energy is different than fossil. And so, you know, figuring out how to, even though we have legislation and executive orders in New Jersey, and that's true elsewhere, to make these things happen. There are a whole suite of other regulations that also need to be abided by in order to execute the clean energy transition. And so it is intense interdisciplinary team problem solving. And I, you know, leaning back on my history of teamwork as a team sport athlete at Dartmouth and throughout my whole life, I think I'm well situated to be in that role. But it does absolutely take people with differing expertise from economics to government, to engineering, to technology, science to law—just to name, you know, this suite of relevant expertise—to do the kind of work that is happening to advance the clean energy transition in New Jersey and elsewhere. So, I think that's a good thing because it means everybody, regardless of what your skill set, actually has the ability to contribute. But I'm not sure that as a society or our educational institutions are helping people understand that whatever your skill set is, probably you can be part of the answer if you want to be involved. So that's another thing I think we could do better at communicating, not only the entities that are seeking people for opportunities to be employed to do this work, but also the education system from K all the way through graduate school. How can you be engaged regardless of what your expertise are? And there are real opportunities there.
LJR: Yeah. And I was really taken by that when you were kind of talking and maybe we can talk about what your team is doing now, but that knowing that the skills you're seeing those gaps that you said and thinking, as you were speaking, that you weren't really meaning the technical or the content specific. It's this bigger project management, program management, like dealing with those wicked, undefined problems. A myriad of people and skills at the table. So a lot of people management, not just content management. Is that the kind of thing that you're thinking we need to be instilling, but with that lens or that overlay of some sort of environmental like acumen or at least vocabulary?
KL: Yes, certainly all of those things. I think having some understanding of how policy works and how, what, how the laws are structured. Also critical is how does the electric distribution system work? What is the grid, right? How does the grid work? How do new generation stations get connected into the grid? And, you know, that's actually evolving. And that's one of the other challenges is that all of these things that are, okay, keeping the lights on in your house. Whether it's the federal energy regulatory commission, right, who's charged with electricity that crosses state lines—which is true of everywhere in the United States, except for in Texas, which is its own island—but they write the rules and all of these regional transmission operators who’s job—I called them the traffic cops of the grid—they are responsible for reliability, right? Ensuring that the lights stay on at your house and everybody else's business, house, whatever it is. So the United States is sort of broken up into these separate RTOs, also called ISOs, and they have separate different rule books. So we're different. I live in New Jersey and we're part of the largest RTO in the country. 65 million people get their electricity through the PJM system across 13 different states, all the way out to Illinois, all the way down to Virginia. You can imagine that there are pretty different viewpoints about clean energy in the states that include, you know, West Virginia and, you know, Ohio versus Washington, D.C. and New Jersey. So there is complexity in terms of how those rules are written and what the different stakeholders have to say about it. You know, so at the federal level, at this regional transmission organization level, and even at the state level, there are decisions and there are rules about, you know, how energy gets plugged into the grid, what it costs for that to happen, what the process is for that to happen. And then there is also this whole—and this is important, saying this from the lens of environmental scientists—a whole suite of permits and environmental protection requirements that are necessary at every level of government in order for these projects to come into existence. But those, again, those rules, both sets were written with a different, like “how this works” understanding in mind. And so now these technologies that are behaved differently than the fossil technologies need to get plugged into the grid and they need to negotiate those sets of rules and requirements and regulations. So it's very complicated, I guess is what I'd say, and, you know, I think we're a little bit in the weeds here, but the larger take home message is that this means the process will not be fast.
And there is an important need for training people to understand the basics so that they are well situated to step into these roles in which they have to deal with the complexity. And that's a place where I think, you know, after some more time working on the front lines of this, I think I would be able to make a big contribution, right? Right now, I'm an important cog and an important wheel. What I am seeking to do in the time that I work for New Jersey is to understand how all the cogs and all the wheels work. So that I can go and, you know, design an educational system that helps their…make the cogs for all the wheels. Different cogs for, for each of the different wheels.
LJR: Just a small thing that you have in mind as your future goal.
KL: Well, we'll see, but you know, like I'm a firm believer in let's build a model and then try and figure out, you know, how does the model work? Get the model to work effectively, and then see if we can scale it to something. So, you know, could I find an opportunity at a place that was thinking about climate and energy and go work there and work with the people there to build one of these models? Get it up and running and then work with other places. There are lots of entities throughout the United States and overseas already some good models. Could we then propagate that in a way that, you know, we as a U.S. society are better positioned to meet the needs that are, to me, very clearly coming rapidly in our direction.
LJR: Yeah. So that you can go to sleep at night, knowing that your son has seen you try to do everything you can like you said last time, right?
KL: Absolutely. Yeah, and I think you know, like that's what keeps me motivated As I said, this is the hardest thing I've ever done is, you know, like the high stakes on an aggressive timeline. Because we're trying to get to clean energy, really important contracts and decisions that are being made to, you know, commit the state to this clean energy future and myriad really complex problems to try and negotiate. So it's a pretty intense thing to have decided to do, but I think it's important for me in terms of where I ultimately think I can be most helpful. But also important to be a, you know, fundamental contributing member of a really impressive team that has a lot to manage.
LJR: Yeah. And one of the things you said though, about kind of making that switch: no one in their right mind would give up the autonomy, the certainty, the lack of bureaucracy and you're running smack into that bureaucracy, but yet you seem to have this kind of sanguine view about we know it's going to take time, right? We know this bureaucracy was not made for this thing that we're trying to do this novel need. And yet there's the ticking time bomb. So how—it seems like you're okay with what this time factor is. How are you squaring all of that? Cause it's really tricky.
KL: It is tricky. I think we are going as fast as we responsibly can.
LJR: Yeah. Right.
KL: Right? But that makes me even more committed to finding ways to help others go fast in the future. Knowing that, you know, it's…there are these all these complexities and also having faith that there are other people who are recognizing some of the same complexities and working with their teams to solve those complexities so that we can teach others like, okay, you know, we're never going to have exactly the same circumstance. That's one of the other dizzying things: like each state has its own regulatory environment. So it's not like the portability of it, there’s…we’re challenged there. But there are lessons to be learned from the case studies of how, you know, California or Massachusetts or New Jersey succeeded at solving one of these really thorny problems that probably makes it easier for, you know, name your next state to decide their, want to get to a hundred percent clean energy in the, in the next couple of decades. So that's part of what motivates me is this is the work and we need to figure out the answers. I think the other thing about that voice in my head now being quiet is I'm pretty confident I never would have forgiven myself if I decided to take the easy way out, which would be to go back to the thing that I knew how to do well and I was good at and, you know, was purposeful and mattered, right? But, you know, it turns out that that voice, that ethical voice inside my head…like, it needed an answer. And right now, this is the answer. It's quiet now, and it hasn't been in decades. So, in that, I take some, some solace. I will say that it has, you know, I'm tired at the end of every day, and that means that my bandwidth for most anything else is limited. And I think that there is also like a social aspect to this that I hadn't really anticipated—and I take ownership of that, that part of this may be on me—but I don't really want to make small talk anymore. Going to whatever activity or event or dinner party, like I feel a little lonely that there's this so much intensity to the work that I'm doing. That, you know, talking about whatever was on TV or, you know, who's going on summer vacation, where, or whatever nature of those kinds of conversations that you happen with people that you know, but are not your closest people. I don't have a lot of energy for that. And I feel a little badly about that. You know, I'm an extrovert by, by nature. And I often enjoy talking to anybody about…because I think it's just interesting to learn about people and their pathways and their lives. And right now I just don't have a lot of time for that. And I feel a little bit like if you talk to me about what matters to me, I'm going to be the biggest downer in this conversation, right? Like the intensity of the work that I'm doing and what motivates me to do it. I'm pretty earnest. I'm usually only funny by accident. So it's not easy for me to play it off, in some way that makes it relatable. And I hadn't anticipated that being an outcome of making this decision that I have. So I'm still I'm still grappling with that I'd say.
LJR: But the interesting thing about that here is that, yes, the content is like the bigger downer in the room because we're not there yet, but what's behind it or under it or motivating it is that you are convinced that we can get it right. And that we are gonna get there and you're doing all that you can and there's some big joy to that. I mean, even you said, like, that agita has just been quieted. Like, there's a, if it's not joy, at least it's, like, contentment that I'm doing everything in my power. And I don't think that that's, that can't equate to downer. It just can't. Because there's hope in that.
KL: Yeah, thanks. I appreciate that interpretation very much.
LJR: I think, I think the next generation will, we'll see it as hopeful. But good to know. We shouldn't take you out for a drink. We'll let you be for a while.
KL: Well, the other thing is that it's abundantly clear to me that none of this happens unless dedicated people work for government, right? And I think all of us, as we age, you know, our relationship with how we view government changes over time. And, you know, being now in government and sort of recognizing why some of the things that people tend to be frustrated with about government are the way they are, or at least I have an interpretation about why they are the way they are, and that there's a reason for that, right? There's somebody's good intention about how government should serve the people. And there are guardrails in place to make sure that things don't get off the rails. In practice, that leads to more bureaucracy, which makes government slower at accomplishing things. And so people get frustrated by that. And there's no way that any one of us, even with the very best intentions in mind, could design a perfect system for all the future possibilities. And so we're living with that right now. And what we have already talked about. This challenge between the transition from fossil to clean, like, well, nobody, however many years ago that designed the regulations to govern this process was thinking, Oh, I need to deal with these, you know, more distributed resources that are going to be intermittent in their genera-…like that wasn't even on the map. And so, you can appreciate how we get into this space in which there's a whole lots and lots of rule books that have been developed for how government should function for lots of good reasons. But then that is the bureaucracy that is difficult to negotiate at times. But I'm a fundamental believer in the ability of government to improve the lives of people. And I can say with a hundred percent clarity that the team of people that I work with are strongly motivated by that core theme of how do we, you know, contribute to societal good? Despite all of the complexity and all of the challenges that are involved in the work that we do, we are trying to make it better for, you know, first and foremost, the people of New Jersey, but more broadly for, you know…
LJR: The planet.
KL: …the world around us. Yep, the planet. Right. Yeah. Um, so.
LJR: There's hope in that, Kira. There is hope in that.
KL: Yes! Yes, there is. I think, I think there is. I wish that, you know, we could find a way for government to….for people to be less cynical about government. And I think that's, that's probably, you know, on both, both sides, both entities, right…The individual and also the government. The government needs to be able to be responsive or more understood or interpretable for the everyday person. But I think the everyday person also has to, like, own some of the recognition that without government there is chaos. And we need to work for a society in which we are collectively pulling in the same direction, right? How do we get to a better outcome for humanity? We need to—and this is back to a theme that I talked about before—we need to see difference as strength and we need to be gentle with each other in a way that I don't think anybody is being gentle with each other right now.
So I'm going to, that might be a pivot to the other parts of my life. My spouse, Catherine and I are still quite involved in politics at the local level and also at the state and federal level, working to try and get people elected that we think are going to do work on behalf of all people and who are in it for their interest in executing good government. That work continues. I live in a congressional district that is one of the most contested in the country. So we've worked hard to support the candidate in whichever, you know, every two years race is happening, that we think reflects our values most closely. We're gearing up for another one of those showdowns, big high stakes congressional race in our part of the world, as well as—and we talked about this last time—but there is, in our local community, some efforts to, to ban books in our local schools, particularly at the high school level now.
Especially ones that are focused on people who are “other”, including the LGBTQ community that I am a member of. So that's intense and it is a big part of our lived experience in the part of the world that we live in. And, but it, but it's not unique to our community, right? And I think I made that point last time is that all collectively together in our society, I think we need to be trying to figure out how we can celebrate difference and how we can, you know, be cognizant of how people who are on the margin are being used in our society as, and I would submit political tools. And I'd like to hope that, and I, and I actually feel this in, in my community, that the majority of people are not for that kind of behavior and that is very centering or affirming, I'd say, that you know, I guess I'd use this example of my son. He's got two moms. Maybe since I talked to you, there was some kid on the bus who picked on him about having two moms and my son was like, my moms are great. Which, it's a nice feeling to feel that, but, he didn't report it. But some of the kids in our neighborhood who ride the bus with him went to the bus driver and the principal because they were like, that's not right. Kai got picked on because he had two moms. And that's a kind of society that I can live in, right? Like, the society that says, not the kid who's targeted, but the other kids in the community say, that's not okay. We don't believe in that, targeting someone for being different. So, that's what I'm pulling for. I don't think you're ever going to sway the tail end of the distribution, right? There's always going to be some folks who want to pick at difference in a way that is disruptive and demeaning. But I think we should be working for a society in which people are willing to stand up and say, we celebrate difference. We value diversity. We think it's a strength and we're not going to tolerate you demonizing someone for who they are. You know, we keep working at that here in our little part of the world. My son's 11, right? So you're talking about kids who are not that far along their life journey already recognizing how to get to a better world. And that I think makes me hopeful.
LJR: Yeah. More hope. But also I would say more of that you have to be tired at the end of the day, Kira, that all of this is so heavy, right? And, and yet so important and so great to be modeling and all of those things. But I think, I think you do deserve a night out and to heck with it. Like talk about everybody's vacation. I hope you have one coming up and all of that. But I really appreciate your talking to us today and kind of reminding us that these things are important and worth working for and learning more about and figuring out how we can plug in. So thanks.
KL: Happy to do it. Yeah. I mean, I—to go back to something I said in our last conversation— let's be participants, not spectators, right? Because the future of the world depends upon people who want a better outcome for everybody, um, getting in the game. LJR: Oh, you're so inspiring. So thank you so much.
KL: Appreciate it.
LJR: That was Kira Lawrence, currently senior policy advisor for the board of public utilities for the State of New Jersey, who is helping on the front lines of the state's transition to clean energy. Her passion is evident and so very necessary. From one New Jerseyan to another, thank you for your service, Kira.
And from one story enthusiast to another, thank you dear listener for engaging with the tales that our guests bring each week. We are so glad you keep tuning in, whether at Roads Taken Show DOT com or wherever you get your podcasts, with me Leslie Jennings Rowley, on Roads Taken.