Staff Spotlight: Jenny Edwards
Posted by Tim Hanrahan | Date September 22, 2015
Name: Jenny Edwards, Director of the Innovation Exchange
Time at CEE: 5 years (almost!)
Home town: Los Angeles, CA
Favorite school subject: Physics. Or Anthropology. (But not Physical Anthropology.)
Why CEE?: I get to think big and work every day with people who know what it takes to get things done.
In Jenny's words:
CEE has brought a lot of courage and conviction to the energy efficiency world — starting long before my time, and before it was a given that they would have people on their side. CEE's persistence for Minnesota's earliest energy conservation wins helped cement our state's ongoing commitment to efficiency.
Through decades of experience implementing thoughtful programs, CEE's staff have developed a huge depth of knowledge about how people use energy — not machines or buildings, but people. As humanity's relationship with energy use and production continues to evolve, we face many questions about how to change people's perspectives and behavior. And, thanks to its long track record of real-world problem-solving, CEE is uniquely well-positioned to address those challenges.

Every staff role reflects a piece of our response. For my part, I help make CEE's knowledge and passion accessible to people beyond our organization. Through both our research and programs, CEE staff continually touch how people use energy. I use outreach and engagement to connect those touch points to the bigger world in which we operate, so our learning can become a driver to improve policies, a cohesive vision for a community, or a trigger for collective behavior change.
The energy field is rarely a clear or comfortable space. Our job is to challenge assumptions and infuse the logical world of engineering with the visionary playground of human emotion and behavior. I have worked many great places, but never with a team that is so adept at driving real solutions for real people — which is exactly what we need.
Jenny's staff bio
Read all of the #WeAreCEE staff profiles