![]() WRISE COLORADO FULLSo they got a room in a hotel near the conference center and were expecting maybe 20 or 30 folks to show up, and had a huge room full of people - about 120, almost all women. “We hosted our first-ever lunch,” Graf said. The group brought some young women who were students and graduates to the annual wind conference. Mayer’s work in the wind industry earned her national recognition where she promoted Colorado utilities’ wind-power programs. But even that impromptu luncheon showed the demand to get women more involved in renewable energy.Īfter being founded by a small group of women who were frustrated at the lack of women in the industry, particularly at national conferences and as company executives, the group pooled its own money and, along with some money from friends and a few forward-thinking wind companies at the time, the group started the Rudd Mayer Fellowship, one of Women of Wind Energy’s key pieces, according to Graf. WoWE has been around since 2005, and it has come a long way since its humble beginnings as a luncheon at a WINDPOWER show in Denver. “Especially as women sort of move around in the technologies over their careers.” “We really think it’s a great moment in time and opportunity to be supporting women across all those technologies,” she said. Nuances exist depending on the size of the organizations or the maturity of the industry, but a lot of the work is similar, according to Graf. “There’s a lot more overlap between the work that’s going on across all the renewable energy space, and in the end, the issues around advancing and retaining women are pretty similar,” she said. Graf said the industry is becoming more diverse with some wind companies working in solar and energy storage as well as law firms and finance organizations that work across the energy spectrum. “There’s been a lot of demand from our membership and from our chapters to be working across some other technologies as well as from our corporate sponsors and from the industry.” More Diverse Industry “While our mission has been about renewable energy all along, this is a moment in time for us to kick the evolution of our work beyond just the wind-industry base,” she said. In addition to programs to help recruit and maintain women in the wind industry, it will now expand that role to other areas of renewable energy, according to Executive Director Kristen Graf. Not only does that mean an expansion of its core philosophy, but also a new name and logo to go along with it.Īs of May 16, Women of Wind Energy is now Women of Renewable Industries and Sustainable Energy (WRISE). ![]() ![]() After 12 years as Women of Wind Energy, the nonprofit organization is rebranding its image as its focus on renewables evolves. ![]()
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