Speakers

THE 43RD USAEE NORTH AMERICAN CONFERENCE WILL FEATURE A DYNAMIC AND GROWING LINEUP OF SPEAKERS FROM ACROSS INDUSTRY, GOVERNMENT, AND ACADEMIA! — MORE SPEAKER ANNOUNCEMENTS AND INFORMATION ARE COMING SOON!

Featured Speakers

Mark P. Mills
Executive Director & Senior Fellow | National Center for Energy Analytics

Mark P. Mills is a contributing editor at City Journal, executive director of the National Center for Energy Analytics, a faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, and a co-founding partner in Montrose Lane, an energy-focused investment fund. He is also a former senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Mills is the author of The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and a Roaring 2020s (Encounter Books, 2021) and hosts the podcast The Last Optimist. His other books include Digital Cathedrals (2020) and Work in the Age of Robots (2018). He also coauthored The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy (Basic Books, 2005) with Peter Huber.

His writing has appeared in outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, and RealClear. He has also made media appearances on CNN, Fox News, NBC, PBS, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In 2016, he was named “Energy Writer of the Year” by the American Energy Society. Earlier in his career, he worked as a technology advisor for Bank of America Securities and coauthored the Huber-Mills Digital Power Report, a technology investment newsletter.

Mills has testified before Congress multiple times and has briefed state public service commissions, legislators, and federal agencies on energy and technology policy. He previously served in the White House Office of Science and Technology under President Ronald Reagan and later advised private-sector firms, the Department of Energy, and U.S. national laboratories on science and technology policy.

He began his career as an experimental physicist and development engineer, working at Bell Northern Research and at RCA’s David Sarnoff Research Center on technologies including microprocessors, fiber optics, and missile guidance systems, where he earned several patents. He holds a degree in physics from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada.

Anna Broughel
Lecturer in Sustainable Energy Transition Policy | School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

Anna Broughel is a Lecturer in Sustainable Energy Transition Policy at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. As a member of the executive council of the United States Association for Energy Economics (USAEE), Anna holds the position of Vice President of Communications at the USAEE and is in charge of the USAEE/IAEE annual conference plenaries. Her extensive engagement with alumni of the Clean Energy Leadership Institute showcases her dedication to fostering collaboration and advancing clean energy solutions. In the past, Anna worked as an energy economist at Tetra Tech and as a science and technology fellow in the U.S. Department of Energy. During her tenure, she focused on leveraging big data and behavioral economics to generate actionable insights for a successful energy transition. She holds a Ph.D. in economics and policy, conferred by the State University of New York in association with Syracuse University, where she was a Fulbright scholar. She completed post-doctoral training at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and the University of Maryland, College Park.

Nathaniel Gilbraith
Manager – Energy Market Design | New York Independent System Operator (NYISO)

Nathaniel (Nate) Gilbraith, PhD is the Manager of Energy Market Design for the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), which operates New York’s high-voltage transmission system, manages the state’s competitive wholesale electricity markets, and conducts comprehensive power system planning. Dr. Gilbraith joined the NYISO in 2015 and has held roles of increasing responsibility across the organization. These include roles within Market Mitigation & Analysis, Market Operations, and Market Structures. In his current role, Nate leads the evolution of energy and ancillary services market design to facilitate reliability through markets for a changing electric grid. Dr. Gilbraith earned a Doctor of Philosophy, PhD, from Carnegie Mellon University as well as a Master’s of Science in Environmental Engineering from Clarkson University. Dr. Gilbraith has been featured in industry publications Utilities Policy and RTO Insider as well as the New York Times.

Amanda Harker Steele
Senior Energy Economist | Southwest Power Pool

Dr. Amanda Harker Steele is a Senior Energy Economist at Southwest Power Pool (SPP), a Regional Transmission Organization (RTO) that manages the electric grid and wholesale power market for much of the central United States. At SPP, Dr. Harker Steele focuses on developing new and revising existing market design concepts. She and her team are tasked with ensuring such concepts are grounded in foundational economic principles to maintain the assurance of economically efficient and also reliable market outcomes for SPP and its members. Prior to joining SPP, Dr. Harker Steele worked as a Research Economist and site-support contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). Her research portfolio focuses on understanding the economic efficiency and distributional equity implications of changes in the way energy is produced and consumed. Her work has been featured in Energy Policy, Energy Research and Social Science, and Energies. Additionally, Dr. Harker Steele serves as the President of the Three Rivers Chapter of USAEE.

Karr Ingham
Economist and President | Texas Alliance of Energy Producers

Karr Ingham is an Amarillo, Texas economist, and serves as Petroleum Economist and President of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers. For over 25 years, he has worked as a metro/regional economist in Texas and elsewhere, and as an oil and gas/energy economist. He is a frequent commentator on the state’s oil and gas economy as well as markets and prices for crude oil and natural gas, and on state and national energy policy issues. He served as the Consulting Petroleum Economist for the Alliance from 2003-2024, and became the organization's Executive Vice President in 2019. Ingham was named President of the Alliance in July 2024. Mr. Ingham is a native of Stratford in the northern Texas Panhandle, and is a magna cum laude BBA Economics graduate of West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas (and taught undergraduate economics there for a short time as well). He is a council member, vice president for conferences, presenter, and panel moderator for the US Association of Energy Economics. Ingham also co-chairs the Supply and Demand Committee of the Independent Petroleum Association of America. He is a member of the Texas Comptroller’s Economic Roundtable, a group of statewide and national economists convened to offer economic insight to the Comptroller in terms of the general condition of the Texas economy and the ongoing revenue outlook. He is the creator of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers Texas Petro Index, a tool for tracking growth rates and industry cycles in the Texas oil and gas exploration & production sector, as well as the Alliance Texas Permian Basin Petroleum Index.

Greg Upton
Executive Director & Associate Professor - Research | LSU Energy Institute

Dr. Greg Upton's research interests span energy and environmental economics. He has contributed to over 40 publications and presented research to more than 200 industry, government, and academic audiences, including testifying in committees of both chambers of the Louisiana Legislature and a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives. He is regularly interviewed on live talk radio and other news outlets and has been quoted or cited over 250 times in local and national media including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, and NPR. Dr. Upton is the 2026 president of the United States Association for Energy Economics (USAEE), a member of the University Advisory Board to the Center for Legislative Energy & Environmental Research (CLEER) and an appointee to the National Petroleum Council (NPC). He is a legislatively appointed member of the Clean Hydrogen Task Force created by House Concurrent Resolution 64 of the 2024 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature as well as the Task Force on Local Impacts of Carbon Capture and Sequestration created by Senate Resolution 179 of the 2023 Regular Special Session of the Louisiana Legislature. He is part of the Baton Rouge Business Report Forty Under 40 class of 2024 and an LSU alumnus, receiving his Ph.D. in Economics from LSU in 2014.