Jeff Clark is President and CEO of the Advanced Power Alliance (APA), which promotes the development of advanced utility-scale power generation, infrastructure, and energy storage to drive American energy expansion, leveraging the best attributes of every energy resource to reduce costs for consumers, reduce emissions, and position the United States for leadership in global energy and technology markets.

Prior to joining APA, he was Senior Vice President of Governmental Affairs at the American Electronics Association (AeA), where he guided the organization’s state policy efforts, focused on advanced materials and electric systems. He earlier headed the largest regional office of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), representing the interests of small business owners before policymakers in 17 state capitols and Washington, DC. During the George W. Bush administration, he was twice appointed to co-chair the United States Small Business Administration’s National Advisory Council.

Earlier in his career, he was a principal at Public Strategies, Inc. (now Hill+Knowlton Strategies), where he counseled clients facing public policy, media, and crisis communications challenges. He also worked in the Texas House of Representatives, directing two legislative committees focused on international trade.

His political experience has included (mostly) winning campaigns ranging from mayoral races to the US Presidency. He grew up in a military family and maintains an interest in policies affecting the military community. He authored The Legislators Guide to Military Children, which led to his participation in drafting and advocating for the Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children, which has now been ratified by all 50 states and Washington DC.

He studied Political Science in West Texas at Abilene Christian University and earned a Master of Science in Energy Policy and Climate at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC. He and his wife live in Austin and have two daughters.

Judd Messer is the Texas Vice President for The Advanced Power Alliance (APA). Before joining APA, Judd worked for multiple Texas state legislators, including three sessions as Chief of Staff for Representative Trent Ashby (R-Lufkin). During his tenure in the Texas Capitol, Judd had the opportunity to work extensively on the state budget, as well as issues like public school finance, economic development, and broadband expansion.

Immediately prior to joining APA, Judd was the Director of Legislative Affairs at Texas Electric Cooperatives. Before his work around the State Capitol, Judd served as Special Assistant to Augie Garrido, former Head Coach for University of Texas Baseball.

Judd is a native of Belton, Texas, and a proud graduate of The University of Texas at Austin (BA-2013). Judd lives in Austin with his wife, their daughter, and their chocolate lab, Mickey.

Steve Gaw, an attorney, former Speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives, and former Chair of the Missouri Public Service Commission, is the Senior Vice President of Markets and Infrastructure for the Advanced Power Alliance (APA). His primary focus is on RTO policy issues within the Southwest Power Pool region and matters of national interest that impact the advancement of renewable energy.

Steve is a voting member of the Southwest Power Pool Members Committee, MOPC, and Corporate Governance Committee. He serves in several strategic task forces in SPP and is heavily involved in seams issues. During his tenure working with APA advocating for clean energy, SPP increased its renewable capacity by over 30GW, and renewables are now ranked first in the production of energy in the region on an annual basis.

Steve was a founding director and past President of the Organization of MISO States (OMS) and a founding director of the SPP Regional State Committee. Steve was the representative for the renewable generators on the Steering Committee of the Eastern Interconnect Planning Corroborative. He has been a speaker and moderator in regional, national, and international forums on energy policy dealing with both electricity and natural gas.

Steve is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Truman State University with a B.S. in Physics and has a law degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Sarah Pettus is the Director of HR and Operations at Advanced Power Alliance, where she oversees a variety of key functions to ensure smooth daily operations. From managing payroll and membership databases to coordinating grants and events, Sarah’s role touches almost every aspect of the organization. With a strong background in both HR and accounting, she works closely with vendors, consultants, and members, ensuring that everything runs efficiently and on schedule.

When she’s not organizing events or balancing budgets, Sarah is a busy mom to three kids and shares her home in Texas with her husband, Lance. The Pettus family enjoys life with their dogs, cats, chickens, and goats. Whether it’s wrangling animals or planning the next big meeting, Sarah’s energy and organization keep everything in line.

Sarah Smallwood is a communications professional with more than five years of experience in renewable energy, public affairs, and strategic communications. As Communications Manager at the Advanced Power Alliance (APA), she leads digital strategy, brand management, content creation, and member engagement initiatives supporting clean energy advocacy across APA’s footprint.

Sarah specializes in crafting clear, compelling messaging that connects industry stakeholders, policymakers, and the public. In addition to designing marketing materials, producing internal newsletters, and conducting research, she has managed website redesigns, spearheaded stakeholder assessments, led social media campaigns, and organized major communications workshops and webinars.

She holds a Bachelor of Journalism and Mass Communication with a minor in Environmental Studies from the University of Oklahoma. She resides in Oklahoma City where she is a loving daughter, sister, aunt, and active community member.

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Randy Cain has been representing clients before the Texas Legislature since 1989. He opened the Law Office of Randy C. Cain in April 2004 and is engaged in a state governmental affairs practice in Austin, Texas. He offers consulting and lobbying services on legislative, regulatory, and administrative matters.

Randy began working for Advanced Power Alliance (APA) in 2007, and since then has successfully navigated a multitude of complex legislative issues on behalf of APA members.

Randy was formerly a partner at the Austin law firms of Brown McCarroll, and Hilgers & Watkins. He has served as general counsel to the Texas Secretary of State, and prior to that was Deputy to the Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a member of Secretary Bentsen’s legislative staff. Randy was legislative director for Senator Lloyd Bentsen, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Before his work in Washington, he was assistant city attorney for legislative affairs of the City of Dallas.

He is recognized in the 2007 – 2025 Editions of The Best Lawyers in America in the specialty of Government Relations Law. He is a member of the Legislative and Campaign Law Section of the State Bar of Texas and is an Austin Bar Foundation Fellow. He is Board-Certified in Legislative & Campaign law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.

Randy is a native of Pampa, Texas, and is a graduate of Baylor University School of Law and the University of Texas at Austin.

Mark Yates has a decade of experience in public policy ranging across multiple industries. Formerly the Vice President of Advanced Power Alliance (APA), Mark now advocates on behalf of APA members through his position at Cornerstone Government Affairs. Mark has successfully navigated multiple complex challenges faced by the clean energy industry, shaping legislative and regulatory policy within the most important energy region in the country.

Prior to his time with APA, Mark worked at the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, where he led membership recruitment initiatives, mobilized a statewide grassroots campaign, defended landowner rights, and lobbied for rural issues on behalf of the nearly 90,000 farmers and ranchers. At Cornerstone, Mark has been able to work on energy issues across the country and now plays an integral role in local and state policy development.

The Advanced Power Alliance’s efforts in Nebraska are led by a trio of veteran lobbyists from American Communications Group, Inc. – Richard Lombardi, Eric Gerrard, and Jennifer Williams.

Richard Lombardi, the Chairman of American Communications Group, Inc., brings four decades of political expertise to national, regional, and state clients seeking successful statutory policy in Nebraska. Rich has long been active in public service work throughout the state, having been appointed by several Nebraska Governors to committees to distribute funds for recycling, alternate energy, trails development, historic preservation, and conservation practices. Following an appointment to the Board of Directors of a major electric utility, Rich and Julie Erickson created American Communications Group, Inc. in 1985.

Over the past three decades, the American Communications Group, Inc. has been involved in every piece of Nebraska renewable energy legislation enacted by the nation’s only Unicameral Legislature. This expertise encompasses and includes statutes that eventually created the Nebraska Energy Office, state solar easements, renewable tax credits, regulatory incentives for renewables, and specific statutes that allow private renewable energy companies to operate in the nation’s only total publicly owned electric power system in the country. Since 2008, American Communications Group Inc. has been retained by the former Wind Coalition and now the Advanced Power Alliance.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, he became a political science graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan University and, while there, was elected President of their Student Affairs Senate. Rich furthered his education through specialized training in media, community organization, tax research, and renewable energy at the New School of Social Research in New York City, the Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago, the George Meany Center in Washington D.C. and the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden, Colorado.

Joshua Svaty has more than 20 years of experience in agriculture, water, energy, business development, and policy. He was elected four times to the Kansas Legislature from his home district in central Kansas, serving as a ranking member on the House Agriculture and Water Committee in addition to serving on the House Energy and Utilities Committee and the Administrative Rules and Regulations Committee.

In 2009, Governor Mark Parkinson named Josh the 14th Kansas Secretary of Agriculture, overseeing the fifth largest agriculture economy in the United States. Following his tenure, Josh became a Senior Adviser in the United States Environmental Protection Agency out of the Region 7 Office. Josh was asked to serve as the Vice President at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, during which time the agriculture non-profit’s fundraising more than doubled, furthering their work of perennializing the major grain crops around the world.

Josh has testified before Congress and spoken nationally and internationally on issues related to agriculture, natural resources, and energy. He is the co-author of the 2020 Kansas Notable Book Petroglyphs of the Kansas Smoky Hills and is a contributing essayist on another book on Kansas set for publication in 2025. His family has farmed in Kansas since 1864, and he and his wife Kimberly, along with their four children, own and operate Free State Farms in Ellsworth County.

Kimberly Gencur Svaty is a nationally recognized leader in energy policy. As a former board member at AWEA (now American Clean Power), Kimberly is a respected industry expert and sought-after source of information in local, state, and national publications and news from documentaries. Kimberly began her work in the traditional utility space, but nearly 20 years ago, she formed Gencur Svaty Public Affairs to provide turnkey public-facing solutions ranging from policy development to legislative, regulatory, communications, community engagement, and business development.

When Kimberly took the helm of the Advanced Power Alliance in Kansas in 2008, there were only two operating wind farms in the state. Since then, the state’s clean energy footprint has added 44 wind farms, utility-scale solar, battery storage, and an overall clean portfolio of more than 9 gigawatts of clean energy – making Kansas one of the largest energy-producing states in the nation. Kimberly was directly involved in every piece of policy at the state and local level influencing those projects.

Kimberly is the mother of four children and she and her husband raise them in Topeka on their operating livestock and crop operation in central Kansas, which provides a unique perspective into the intersection of energy, agriculture, and water policy along with the challenges of further seeding the clean energy economy in rural areas to power ever increasing demand for energy in rural and urban areas.

Kimberly served nine years on the Board of Directors for Harvesters including two years as Board Chairman. Kimberly has also served on the Topeka/Shawnee County Library Board, the Mulvane Art Museum Board of Directors, and the University of Kansas/St. Francis Hospital Board of Directors. She has completed 25 legislative sessions at the federal and state level, served on the Kansas Infrastructure Hub Advisory Committee, and conceptualized the private/public partnership Hydrogen Hub effort – HARVEST Hydrogen. Kimberly is also in the final stage of her Ph.D. program in International Relations.

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The Advanced Power Alliance’s efforts in Nebraska are led by a trio of veteran lobbyists from American Communications Group, Inc. – Eric Gerrard, Jennifer Williams, and Richard Lombardi.

Eric Gerrard serves as the lead lobbyist for the clean power industry in Nebraska, coordinating industry lobbyists to provide a single powerful voice on behalf of the industry to state policymakers. The American Communications Group, Inc. has represented Advanced Power Alliance members since 2008 and has been involved in every piece of Nebraska renewable energy legislation enacted by the nation’s only Unicameral Legislature. In the most recent Nebraska legislative session, Eric and the industry halted efforts to stop private renewable electric development in the State.

Eric was born in Norfolk, Nebraska and raised in Lincoln. After completing his undergraduate degree in Advertising at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, Eric worked in the Chicago area in corporate communications and marketing. Following his time in Chicago, Eric received his law degree at the University of San Diego School of Law. Upon graduation, Eric returned to Lincoln to practice law. It was at that time he connected with American Communication Group and took a strong interest in the Nebraska Unicameral and the public policy side of the law. He is active in the community and serves on numerous non-profit boards.

The Advanced Power Alliance’s efforts in Nebraska are led by a trio of veteran lobbyists from American Communications Group, Inc. – Jennifer Williams, Richard Lombardi, and Eric Gerrard.

Jennifer Williams is a former Lancaster County Commissioner who during her tenure enacted responsible zoning policy for clean power development. Jennifer serves as a member of the Nebraska Wind and Solar Conference Planning Committee. Her professional experience includes work within state and local government, and ownership of a robust consulting practice that championed the passage of the bond issue to build the West Haymarket and Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln. She has served in the Lincoln Mayor’s Office as an advisor to Mayor Don Wesely and served as the Chief of Staff to current Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird.

Her career began as a page and staff member at the Nebraska Unicameral and was followed by work for Governor Ben Nelson in his Policy Research Office. She has served as the Director of Communications for a real estate development company and in numerous roles related to political and non-profit fundraising campaigns. She is an active member and Past President of Lincoln Rotary #14 and has served in leadership roles on several non-profit boards, including the United Way of Lincoln and Lancaster County.

She is a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a Bachelor of Journalism. Jennifer is a downtown Lincoln resident, the mother of two adult children, and the lead singer in the band ‘The Usual Suspects’.

Justin Berg works as a Transmission Policy Analyst at Advanced Power Alliance. Previously, he was an energy trading analyst at Equilibrium Energy, where he led Real-Time Co-Optimization efforts and advised stakeholders on ERCOT and CAISO market developments affecting its utility-scale battery projects. Before that, at Enel X Way, he managed the company’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program and coordinated EV charger data delivery to utility and DERM programs nationwide. He’s also currently a fellow at the Clean Energy Leadership Institute. Justin holds a BA (’16) from the University of Michigan and an MPP (’22) with honors from the University of Chicago.