The Navigator, April 2025 Edition

Prior to working at Relae, Dr. Ahmed was the Government Affairs and Policy Lead for the COVID-19 Response at the CDC. She rejoined CDC in August 2021 after two years at the Guttmacher Institute as the Associate Director for Federal Issues. Before her time at the Guttmacher Institute, Dr. Ahmed spent 10 years with the CDC, including seven years based overseas at US embassies in Rwanda, Namibia and Haiti as a senior technical advisor, and three years as the Associate Division Director for Policy and Communications in the Division of Global Health Protection at CDC headquarters in Atlanta.In addition, Dr. Ahmed has worked as a sexual health counselor at an alternative high school in Michigan and as a consultant in Bangladesh on the labor rights of migrant women. Dr. Ahmed has also conducted field research on sex worker rights in Cambodia, health financing in rural Cameroon, and donor coordination of malaria programs in Senegal. She holds a BA in political science from Brown University, MPP and MPH degrees from the University of Michigan, a MBA from the University of Oklahoma, and a DrPH from the University of North Carolina, where she is also an adjunct faculty member.

Dr. Dees leads Relae's scientific advisory practice for the transportation fuel and industrial commodity sectors. He brings interdisciplinary expertise to the bioeconomy and bioenergy systems, bridging industrial ecology, economics, and climate policy to drive decarbonization. As a researcher, Dr. Dees explored the role of biomass as both an energy feedstock and a substrate for carbon removal (BiCRS), integrating technoeconomic analysis and life cycle assessment with market-enabling policy. His work has been featured in leading academic journals, including Environmental Science and Technology, Green Chemistry, and ES&T Water. Over a two-year collaboration with the Energy Systems team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Dr. Dees was a lead contributor to the US DRIVE Net-Zero Carbon Fuels Technical Analysis, evaluating the potential for ethanol decarbonization and the climate impacts of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). At Relae, he directs an interdisciplinary team to provide strategic guidance at the intersection of transport fuels and heavy industry. He has spearheaded the development of industry-standard resources, including the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Primer and the Criteria for High-Quality Environmental Attribute Certificates for the steel and concrete sectors.

Dr. Friedmann is one of the most widely known and authoritative experts in the US on carbon removal (CO₂ drawdown from the air and oceans), CO₂ conversion and use (carbon-to-value), hydrogen, industrial decarbonization, green manufacturing, and carbon capture and sequestration.He served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy at the Department of Energy during the Obama Administration, where he was responsible for DOE's R&D program in advanced fossil energy systems, carbon capture, and storage (CCS), CO₂ utilization, and advanced power generation. More recently, he was a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia. He has held positions at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, including Chief Energy Technologist.

Shirin has a diverse professional background spanning nature based solutions, energy policy, and data analysis. Before joining Relae, she worked as a Research Associate for CLASP where she conducted policyresearch on the efficiency and accessibility of household appliances across an international landscape. Prior to CLASP, she also worked at Indufor North America where she supported client-based consulting work relating to landscape conservation and forestry. During her time in undergrad, Shirin also worked in the UC Davis SCOW lab where she facilitated research on enhancing the carbon sequestration properties of agricultural soils.

Sanna works closely with clients to advise them on high-quality carbon reduction and removal strategies and solutions, bridging science and impact-focused outcomes.

Sanna has worked in environmental science advisory since 2014. She draws on her professional experience in environmental engineering and strategic advisory with expertise in climate earth systems, land use and water resource management, and urban climate adaptation. 

Prior to Relae, Sanna was the Carbon Dioxide Removal Lead for the Energy Transitions Commission, publishing Mind the Gap: How Carbon Dioxide Removals Must Complement Deep Decarbonisation to Keep 1.5°C Alive in 2022. While at SYSTEMIQ, a sustainability-focused systems change company, Sanna was research manager for the Food and Land Use Coalition during the publication of Growing Better: 10 Critical Transitions to Transform Food and Land Use (laying out one of the first roadmaps for the global food systems transition). She also provided advisory services to the UNEP International Resource Panel on their 2021 strategic direction. She began her career as an civil and environmental engineer, focusing on climate resilient design for major infrastructure developments. 

Sanna is a Fulbright Scholar, and has worked in New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Dr. Atreya has worked in climate technology research and strategic advisory since 2009. She was the lead author of Bioresources within a Net-Zero Emissions Economy, a report by the Energy Transitions Commission evaluating the role of sustainable bioresources in climate change mitigation. While at SYSTEMIQ, a sustainability-focused systems change company, Meera provided strategic advice to a major climate-focused philanthropic foundation and co-authored a report on alleviating the plastic waste crisis; the United Nations Environment Programme is currently using this analysis as the basis for a global plastics treaty. Prior to SYSTEMIQ, Meera was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she was designated as an Affiliate Expert in Renewable Energy & Cleantech and was a key member of the team that steered McKinsey to address its own global carbon emissions. 

Meera is based in London and is an advisor to Carbon Gap and former Technical Advisory Group Member of the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). She holds a PhD in Chemistry (Chemical Biology) from UC Berkeley and an A.B. cum laude from Harvard. Dr. Atreya was awarded a US National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for her doctoral research on engineering enzymes to improve the efficiency, and lower the cost, of converting cellulosic biomass to 2^nd-generation biofuels.

Mila has professional and academic experience spanning carbon markets, climate-smart agriculture, and net-zero strategy. Prior to joining Relae, Mila worked at Climate Impact Partners, where she conducted strategic research on corporate sustainability and the voluntary carbon market. There she developed a deep understanding of the role of nature-based carbon removal in credible private sector climate strategies. Her work spanned the impacts of regulatory and market initiatives on carbon credit demand and corporate claims, such as Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI), and the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). Before Climate Impact Partners, she worked as a Summer Analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), where she conducted client-facing research on the economics and carbon storage potential of regenerative agriculture in the United States. Mila holds an MS in Energy Systems and Data Analytics from University College London and a BA in Economics and Geography from Trinity College Dublin. In her postgraduate degree, her work focused on using machine learning models to forecast global crop yields under different climate scenarios.

A.J. Simon is a mechanical engineer and energy systems expert, whose passion for efficiency and insatiable curiosity has led to a 25+ year career spanning industry, academia and the US Department of Energy.

Prior to joining Relae, he managed the Energy Group at Lawrence Livermore National Lab where he led assessments of technologies as diverse as nuclear energy, carbon capture and removal, the energy-water nexus, hydrogen fuel, building energy efficiency, and soldier-portable power.

From 2003 to 2008, he helped to manage a large portfolio of university-led clean energy research at Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Project. From 2001 to 2003, he developed combustion and emissions control technologies for General Electric's diesel and gas turbine product lines.

Before joining Relae, Thaddeus worked in Washington, DC for more than a decade, focusing on energy, environment, and climate policy. Most recently, he served as Legislative Director for Congressman Marc Veasey where he led the Congressman’s legislative team. He is especially proud to have played a part in building transformative climate legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). Prior to joining Congressman Veasey’s office, he worked at the U.S. Department of Energy in the office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).

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