5th Lights on women scholarship: meet the recipients

Lights on Women is delighted to announce the winners of the 2023 Lights on Women Scholarship:

Eva Chih-Jung Lee, Lorraine Claffey, Nino Maghradze, Shalom Iboh, Alessia Cornella, Sasa Solujic, MaryQueen Damisa, Stephania Mosquera López, Andrea Klaric.

Lights on Women scholarship award

The recipients of the scholarship will be granted access to one complimentary seat each on our FSR courses, as well as an opportunity to contribute to our blog with a topic of their choosing. The FSR courses available this year include Regulation of the Power Sector, The EU Green Deal, Electric Vehicles, and Evolution of the Electricity Markets in Europe.

Here are the profiles of our winners, detailing their current occupations, vocations, and future ambitions:

Testimonials from the winners

Eva Chih-Jung Lee

Eva Chih-Jung LEE holds a Bachelor’s degree from National Tsing Hua University in Energy Engineering and a Master’s degree from HEC Paris in Sustainable Development. She has 6 years of experience in the energy sector in sub-Saharan Africa, including developing solar mini-grids business in Tanzania, managing research projects on energy access in Kenya and Nigeria, and leading the design of solar productive use financing facilities in Benin and Mali. Most recently, Eva advises humanitarian operations in the Middle East and North Africa region on its energy challenges, focusing on energy access with a market-based approach and integrated planning.

Having worked across development and humanitarian contexts, I have had the opportunity to work alongside public partners at national and sub-national levels. The importance of public policy and framework conditions for the promotion of renewable energy markets should not be understated. For example, for the private sector to deliver energy services to rural and hard-to-reach populations, the regulatory environment needs to provide market-friendly conditions and clear guidelines. A deeper understanding of various policy and regulatory tools will help me better support renewable energy practitioners. I believe the FSR course on Regulation of the Power Sector will provide me with the necessary training to take my career to the next level.

 

Nino Maghradze

Nino Maghradze is a PhD working in the energy sector for more than 15 years. She has experience of working in TSO, private companies, and academic institutions. Her main focus is electricity markets and renewable energy projects development. She has been leading commercial activities in the companies to identify new opportunities and driving growth across the business activities, establishing the relationships with energy companies, participating in operational management of the small hydro power plants, organizing procedures for electricity export from Georgia to Turkey, analyzing and researching electricity markets with a particular focus on regulations.

I have been very passionate about electricity markets since my university studies, and I am very happy that nowadays my home country – Georgia is pursuing to implement EU regulations and directives. My working experience in different companies helped me to envision the electricity market design aspects from different perspectives and perceive the importance of implementing necessary regulations.

I am keen to contribute further to the reforms in the Georgian power sector and provide more input to the market stakeholders. This scholarship was a remarkable opportunity for me to deep dive into the subject and get answers to lots of questions. It showed me the way to further proceed and become a real expert in the field. Furthermore, we had a chance to meet lots of professionals working in the sector and make very good networking.

Shalom Iboh

Shalom Iboh is a Chemical Engineer, a renewable energy professional, and a climate advocate. She completed her Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering and now pursuing a Doctoral degree in Chemical Engineering, focusing on Energy, Environment, and Sustainability. She is also the founder of Renew Watts Technologies. She pioneers renewable energy education and solar installation training for the grassroots community. As a solar engineer, she has facilitated technical studies, resolved system malfunctioning, and supervised residential solar installations up to 35kWp, accounting for a 4.42t cut in CO2 emissions. She has spoken at high-level conferences, such as the 2023 New York Climate Week, AIWF x WiSER conference, Naija Youth Sustainability Forum, and GIZ-Nigeria & ECOWAS. Shalom’s goal is to diversify the Nigerian energy mix and ramp up renewable to achieve universal energy access and emerge as a notable global energy woman.

Nigeria faces tumultuous times as it grapples with energy poverty, climate crisis, and subsidy removal from petroleum products. It is therefore expedient to diversify the energy mix and accelerate renewables. Having worked across all sectors:- industry, business, and now academia, I am resilient about contributing to the global energy transition, especially in grassroots communities. Securing educational partnerships as an I ACT Peer Educator, trained by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), I empower young people with the knowledge of diverse energy system design, installation, and entrepreneurship, fostering the United Nations SDG 4, 7, 8, and 13.

While exploring this course, I delved into remarkable insights that facilitated my renewable energy educational webinars and reinforced my expertise as a clean energy professional. Similarly, as a Woman in Sustainability, Environment, and Renewable Energy (WiSER) Pioneer, I was able to leverage and share this acquired knowledge at high-level conferences and panels. Notably, I have continued in my pursuits to learn voraciously, inspire more young women, and present my solutions at both academic and professional conferences.

In my current position as a doctoral student at the University of Florida, I work with a team of researchers in the Sustainable Process Design Lab to utilize optimization tools and multi-physics simulations to model and develop new technologies for energy and chemical production while minimizing waste and environmental impacts. Our research contributes to providing cost-effective technologies for a sustainable energy future. I plan to culminate my research into a commercially viable innovation able to transform the energy industry in the US and thereafter influence the development of the Nigerian energy sector. I am convinced that through partnerships, accelerated actions, and collaboration, our 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda will be achieved.

MaryQueen Damisa

MaryQueen Damisa is a passionate lawyer with over 10 years of diverse practice encompassing corporate, technology, finance, real estate, dispute resolution, company secretarial services, energy, and environmental law. Currently, she serves as the Head of Legal and Regulatory Affairs at Husk Power Energy Systems Nigeria Limited, leveraging her expertise to champion clean and sustainable energy access.

Prior to joining Husk, she participated in several climate change roundtable discussions, seminars and projects funded by various reputable international organizations in collaboration with national and sub-national government agencies and parastatals. Determined to make bigger climate impact, MaryQueen transitioned to the renewable energy sector.

At Husk, MaryQueen has witnessed the transformative power of renewable energy in uplifting unserved communities. Her LoW scholarship for the FSR course on Regulation for SDG 7 provided an invaluable global perspective on the challenges and opportunities in achieving energy access, particularly in Africa. Recognizing the crucial role of robust legal frameworks in achieving energy justice, she advocates for policies that attract investments and drive sustainable energy projects. This experience informs her commitment to streamlining processes, fostering a business-friendly environment for renewable energy, and integrating gender inclusion into projects, ensuring rural communities, especially women and girls, benefit from this transformation.

Stephanía Mosquera López

Stephanía is a researcher at the Energy and Environment Lab of Orkestra – Basque Institute of Competitiveness (Spain). She is an economist with a PhD in Engineering from the Universidad del Valle (Colombia). Her research focuses on energy markets, especially in modeling electricity prices and the impact of weather variables.

Previously, she was a professor at Universidad EAFIT (Colombia) and Universidad del Valle (Colombia). She completed her doctoral stay at the Energy Center of EPFL (Switzerland) and won the EEX Group Excellence Award in 2019 for her paper “Drivers of Electricity Price Dynamics: A Comparative Analysis of Spot and Futures Markets.

My research has helped me further understand the dynamics of electricity prices, their nonlinearities, and their main drivers. With the current push for deployment of renewables and mitigation of climate change, the study of the impact of climate conditions on energy prices has become of utter importance.Currently, I am working at the Energy Lab on topics of interest for different stakeholders from the Basque Country. For instance, we are studying social acceptance of local renewable energy projects and the energy and climate policies of different territories to incentivize investment in clean technologies.

Lorraine Claffey

Lorraine Claffey is a Communications and Advocacy Associate at Energy Traders Europe (formerly EFET). Prior to joining Energy Traders Europe, Lorraine worked in Communications at the Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER), where she also coordinated the training programmes for the CEER Training Academy. Lorraine is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree (part-time) in Public Policy at Dublin City University (DCU). She also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in International Business and Languages from TU Dublin, and a Higher Diploma in Global Communication from UCC.

I believe that communications plays a pivotal role in the energy transition. One of the biggest challenges within this discipline is providing clear messaging around energy policy and avoiding overly complex jargon. My ambition is to provide clear and comprehensible information, which can be easily understood by the lay public, so that no one is left behind, ensuring a just transition for all. 

Sasa Solujic

Experienced PRINCE2® certified project manager and sustainability expert. Currently working with the issues of sustainability and just transition in the Western Balkans. Passionate about gender equality, poverty and social equity (gesep) in sustainability policies.

Andrea Klaric

I am an accomplished policy adviser with a strong understanding of EU institutional processes, policies and priorities. I am now building an NGO working on carbon removal, one of the most pressing issues in tackling climate change. Carbon Gap is focusing on helping Europe become a world leader in deploying carbon removal by bridging the knowledge, policy and ambition gaps so that carbon removal becomes a critical pillar of European climate action and industrial policy.