Aaron Baker is the chief operating officer of Water Utility Enterprise, where he oversees imported water, two groundwater sub-basins, three water treatment plants, an advanced water purification center, a state-of-the-art water quality laboratory, ten reservoirs, three pumping stations, recharge facilities in seven major recharge systems, and related distribution facilities. Having worked for Valley Water for over 20 years, Aaron’s experience includes engineering, hydraulic modeling, regulatory permitting, project support in Capital Program Services, with engineering and leadership in water treatment, water supply, and flood protection. Aaron is a State of California Registered Professional Civil Engineer and holds a bachelor of science in civil engineering from the University of Southern California.

Since 1987, Don has been the vice president and general manager of Terranova Ranch, Inc., located 25 miles southwest of Fresno, California. Don also owns and farms Prado Farms in Fresno County. Don has served on the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Environmental Farming Act Science Advisory Panel since 2011. In 2012, Don served on the working group for the Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture (AC21). Since 2014, Don has served on the California State Board of Food and Agriculture and is currently president. He also serves as chairman for the California Cotton Alliance, director and past chairman for the California Tomato Growers Association, director and chairman for McMullin Area Groundwater Sustainable Agency, and director for the Raisin City Water District. In the spring of 2020, Don was appointed to the governor’s Task Force for Business and Jobs Recovery. Don is a graduate of California State University, Fresno with a degree in biology.

Celeste Cantú is chair of San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board. She volunteers on the boards and advisory councils for the Water Foundation, Water Education Foundation, and UC ANR President’s Commission, and she is a UC Master Gardener in Riverside County. In 2017, she served as general manager for the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority, where she worked on an Integrated Regional Watershed Management Plan called One Water One Watershed. She previously served as the executive director for the California State Water Resources Control Board and as the USDA rural development state director for California. She was born and raised in Calexico, where she served as planning director and later as executive director for the Imperial Valley Housing Authority. She joined the PPIC Water Policy Center Advisory Council in 2015 and became chair in 2017. She holds a master’s in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a BA in urban planning and policy from Yale.

Rachel Ehlers is a principal fiscal and policy analyst with the California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), which provides nonpartisan advice to the state legislature. The LAO assists the legislature in developing the annual state budget, provides independent analyses of state programs, and produces reports on topics of importance to California. Rachel has worked for the LAO for over 16 years in a number of different policy areas. She currently focuses on water, wildlife and conservation, the Delta, coastal issues, and climate change adaptation. Rachel holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Harvard University.

Alvar Escriva-Bou is an assistant professor with the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles. He’s also an adjunct fellow with the PPIC Water Policy Center. Before that, he was a senior fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center, where his research explored integrated water, energy, and environmental resources management. While at PPIC, he examined the options and consequences of transitioning to groundwater sustainability in the San Joaquin Valley, analyzed California’s water accounting system, studied urban drought resilience, and investigated energy and climate policies related to water use, among other things. Previously, he worked as a civil engineer, managing and developing large infrastructure projects for local and regional governments and consulting firms in Spain. He holds a PhD and MS in water and environmental engineering and a BS in civil engineering from the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain, as well as an MS in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Davis.

Andrew Fecko serves as the general manager for Placer County Water Agency. He has worked in the water and energy field for 25 years, with a particular interest in water supply infrastructure and hydro-electric energy. In his 15 years at PCWA, Andrew has focused on licensing the agency’s Middle Fork Project and marketing the project’s energy output, legislative and regulatory affairs, securing the agency’s water rights and entitlements, and watershed management issues. Andrew began his role as PCWA’s general manager in March of 2020. Andrew is a graduate of UC Davis and a long-time Placer County resident. He lives in the rural community of Foresthill, California with his wife and two children.

Ali Forsythe is the environmental planning and permitting manager for the Sites Project Authority, a planned offstream, multi-purpose reservoir in the Sacramento Valley. Prior to joining Sites, Ali spent over 10 years with the Bureau of Reclamation, where she was deputy regional director, overseeing Reclamation’s operations in the Klamath and Lahontan Basin Area Offices and supervising technical offices and programs within the region. At Reclamation, Ali also led the San Joaquin River Restoration Program as program manager for seven years. In this role, Ali led the largest federally-led river restoration program in the nation, working to restore and maintain fish populations in the 153 miles of the San Joaquin River from Friant Dam to the Merced River confluence. Ali holds degrees in hydrologic sciences and environmental studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Letitia Grenier was the 2020 PPIC CalTrout Ecosystem Fellow and is an adjunct fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center. She directs the Resilient Landscapes Program of the San Francisco Estuary Institute, where she works with partners to conserve California’s living resources by developing landscape-scale, collaborative, science-based visions and solutions. Throughout her career, she has worked as a proponent and leader of science-based management in the Bay-Delta. The Delta Landscapes projects, developed by her and her team, quantify landscape performance and provide science to support large-scale restoration visions for the region. In 2019 and 2015, she served as the science lead for the State of the Estuary Report, and she was also the science lead for the 2015 update to the Baylands Ecosystem Habitat Goals, heading a team of over 200 environmental scientists, managers, and regulators to develop recommendations for restoring and maintaining the health of the Bay’s tidal wetlands in the face of rising sea levels and other stressors. She completed her PhD at University of California, Berkeley, where her research concentrated on the ecology of the Bay-Delta estuary system.

In June 2021, Adel was appointed general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the nation’s largest drinking water provider. Adel is responsible for leading Metropolitan’s daily and long-term operations, providing safe and reliable water for 19 million people in six Southern California counties spanning a 5,200-square-mile service area, with 1,700 employees, 30 facilities, and an annual budget of $1.8 billion. In 2018, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti appointed Adel executive director and general manager of the City of Los Angeles’s Bureau of Street Services (StreetsLA). Prior to that, Adel spent 10 years as assistant general manager for the city’s Bureau of Sanitation, where he was responsible for managing wastewater collection, stormwater and watershed protection, and facilities and integrated water planning. Under his direction, the city prepared the award-winning 2040 One Water LA Plan “One Water.” Adel is a registered civil engineer with the state of California and a national Board Certified Environmental Engineer with a specialty in water.

Ellen Hanak is vice president and director of the PPIC Water Policy Center and a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, where she holds the Ellen Hanak Chair in Water Policy. Under her leadership, the center has become a critical source of information and guidance for natural resource management in California. She has authored dozens of reports, articles, and books on water policy, including Managing California’s Water. Her research is frequently profiled in the national media, and she participates in briefings, conferences, and interviews throughout the nation and around the world. Her other areas of expertise include climate change and infrastructure finance. Previously, she served as research director at PPIC. Before joining PPIC, she held positions with the French agricultural research system, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and the World Bank. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of Maryland.

Rosemary Menard is currently interim city manager of the City of Santa Cruz; she joined the city as water director in January 2014. Prior to that, Rosemary held executive-level water utility leadership roles with the cities of Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and Washoe County in Reno, Nevada. During her seven-year tenure as water director in Santa Cruz, she led a community-based water supply planning effort that produced a consensus-based plan of action for addressing and resolving Santa Cruz’s long-standing water supply reliability issues. She also initiated a major water system reinvestment effort to increase resilience and prepare for climate change. Rosemary also organized and led efforts at the Portland Water Bureau to address threatened and endangered species, including developing the Bull Run Watershed Habitat Conservation Plan for threatened Chinook salmon and steelhead trout. This plan also included a temperature management plan to meet requirements of the federal Clean Water Act.

Jeffrey Mount is a senior fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center. He is an emeritus professor of earth and planetary sciences and founding director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis. A geomorphologist who specializes in the study of rivers, streams, and wetlands, his research focuses on integrated water resource management, flood management, and improving aquatic ecosystem health. He has served on many state and federal boards and commissions that address water resource management issues in the West. He has published more than a hundred articles, books, and other publications, including the seminal book California Rivers and Streams (UC Press). He holds a PhD and MS in earth sciences from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Alesandra Nájera serves as a program officer on the Water Foundation’s Healthy Communities team, where she develops and implements grant-making programs and strategies to ensure residents across the US have safe and reliable drinking water. She is a member of the inaugural cohort of the Water Solutions Network. Previously, Alesandra was a legislative assistant to US Senator Barbara Boxer and to Congressman John Garamendi. Prior to her time on the Hill, Alesandra served as a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Graduate Fellow in the Office of the Secretary at the US Department of the Interior. Alesandra received both undergraduate and master’s degrees from Stanford University, while working at Joint Venture Silicon Valley.

Karla Nemeth is director of the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), where she oversees 4,000 employees. Nemeth focuses on preparing the department and state to adapt to more extreme weather as a result of climate change—investing in aging and green infrastructure, better management of groundwater supplies, and programs to improve local water resilience. Nemeth is committed to providing programs and services that meet the needs of California’s diverse population. Prior to joining DWR, Nemeth worked at the California Natural Resources Agency as Governor Brown’s deputy secretary and senior advisor for water policy. She was the Bay Delta Conservation Plan project manager from 2009 to 2014. She received a bachelor’s degree in political science and Latin American studies from the University of California, San Diego, and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Washington.

Caitlin Peterson is associate director and research fellow at the PPIC Water Policy Center. She is an agroecologist whose research spans climate-smart agriculture, soil health, diversified cropping systems, agroecosystem resilience, and multi-benefit agricultural landscapes. In her previous work, she explored irrigation and soil ecosystem functions in California almond and tomato systems, crop-livestock integration in Brazilian soybean-beef systems, and small farmer adaptation to climate change in Colombia, Tanzania, and Ghana. As a consulting agroecologist, she led programs linking farmers across the US to emerging soil carbon marketplaces. She holds a PhD in ecology and an MS in international agricultural development from the University of California, Davis.

Tim was first appointed by Governor Brown in January 2012 to serve as a member of the Central Valley Flood Protection Board, and most recently reappointed by Governor Newsom in 2020. Since 2005, Tim has worked for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission as the manager of the Natural Resources and Lands Management Division. Previously, Tim spent six years working as the assistant secretary for water policy and science at the California Resources Agency and as the senior policy advisor and deputy director for ecosystem restoration at the California Bay-Delta Authority. Tim’s responsibilities included serving as the state coordinator for the CALFED Bay-Delta Program, and he focused on river systems and the intersection of water supply, ecosystem restoration, water quality, flood protection, and agricultural issues. Tim earned an MS in civil and environmental engineering and an MA in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Daniel Swain is a climate scientist focused on the dynamics and impacts of extreme events—including droughts, floods, storms, and wildfires—on a warming planet. Daniel holds joint appointments as a research scientist within UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, a research fellow in the Capacity Center for Climate and Weather Extremes at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the California climate fellow at The Nature Conservancy. Daniel engages extensively with journalists and other partners, serving as a climate and weather science liaison to print, radio, television, and web media outlets to facilitate broadly accessible and accurate coverage surrounding climate change. Daniel also authors the Weather West blog (weatherwest.com), which provides real-time perspectives on California and western North American weather and climate. He can be found on Twitter @Weather_West.