Energy: 10 Staffers to Know

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She is currently focused on cap and trade, and likes to keep an open-door policy.

“To the extent that we can work the scheduling out, we think it’s important to hear from people who are actively involved in these issues, people in the industry or really anyone who’s interested in these issues,” she said.

Karen Wayland, energy and climate adviser to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
Age: 42
Birthplace: Connecticut
Education: B.A., master’s in natural resources management and engineering, University of Connecticut; dual Ph.D., geology and resource development, Michigan State University

Karen Wayland brings a highly relevant skill set to her new role as policy adviser to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

For starters, she spent five of the past six years as legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council before joining the Speaker’s staff a few months ago.

In that capacity, she also led efforts to coordinate energy and climate strategy among sometimes divergent national environmental groups.

“She knows almost everyone in the environmental community,” one advocate said. Prior to the NRDC, Wayland did a stint as a Congressional science fellow in the office of another top Democrat — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), the Democratic Whip at the time.

Her background should serve her well in the daunting task that looms before her: helping to steer the landmark energy and climate change bill to the House floor after it passes the Energy and Commerce Committee.

To do so, she’ll have to navigate a path littered with powerful Democratic committee chairmen who want a piece of the action, while also preserving the delicate agreements made to get the bill out of the energy committee.

Despite the frenetic pace of her new job, Wayland said she’s excited to be working for the Speaker on her flagship issue of global warming. “This is the place where things are happening,” she said of the House, which has taken the early lead on climate change and energy policy.

Jim Zoia, chief of staff, House Natural Resources Committee
Age: 52
Birthplace: Cleveland
Education: B.A., Ohio State University

A few years after finishing a journalism degree at Ohio State University in 1978, Jim Zoia went to work as a legislative assistant for Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) — and never left.

Nearly 30 years later, Zoia is chief of staff for the House Natural Resources Committee, which is chaired by the West Virginia Democrat.

In that role, lobbyists say Zoia is the “go-to-guy” for energy firms of all stripes eyeing the millions of public acres that fall under the committee’s purview.

The path to those lands lies through the desk of Zoia, who in a recent interview said he was hard at work on a 100-plus-page bill that will “generally allow for orderly development of both onshore and offshore resources.”

A key aspect of that bill concerns some unfinished business from the 110th Congress — oil and gas drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf. The bill also addresses new tensions over renewable energy development on public lands.

While energy production may be the committee’s highest-profile issue, Zoia said he’s particularly proud of his work to preserve public lands, including the recent omnibus lands bill signed into law by President Barack Obama that protects millions of acres and legislation creating the largest network of federally protected rivers in the eastern United States.