She started her career as an energy analyst at ICF Incorporated (now ICF International) and Pacific Gas & Electric Company. She was then a manager at the Environmental Protection Agency, where she pioneered the Energy Star Program. From 1993 to 1995, Zoi served as Chief of Staff of the White House Office on Environmental Policy in the Clinton administration, where she managed the team working on environmental and energy issues. Relocating to Australia in 1996, she became the founding CEO of the New South Wales Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA), a $50 million fund to commercialize greenhouse-friendly technology, from 1996-1999. Under her leadership, SEDA launched the world’s first nationwide Green Power program in 1997 and the world’s largest solar-powered suburb in 1998. In 1999, Zoi became Assistant Director General of the New South Wales Environmental Protection Authority in Sydney, Australia.  Leaving government, from 2003 to 2007 Zoi served as Group Executive Director at the Bayard Group (now Landis+Gyr Holdings) an international energy measurement technologies and systems, with operations in 30 countries and revenues in excess of $1.2 billion. Her work focused on the key role of smart metering to improving energy efficiency in markets in North America, Europe, India, China, Brazil and Australia. 

 

In January 2007, Cathy Zoi returned to the US to join the Alliance for Climate Protection as its founding CEO. Established and chaired by former Vice President Al Gore, the bipartisan Alliance is a non-profit organization spearheading a multi-year, multimillion dollar effort aimed at persuading Americans of both the urgency and solvability of global warming. Zoi is also on the board of the California Clean Energy Fund, a non-profit entity created in 2004 to invest $30 million in emerging clean energy technology companies, and has also served on boards and advisory committees of a variety of companies in the clean technology sector. 

 

While in Australia, Zoi served as Chair of the Board at the Climate Institute, a nonprofit whose purpose is to focus public attention on the impact and importance of climate change, and was a member of the International Climate Change Taskforce (ICCT), a coalition of policymakers, business leaders, scientists, and non-governmental organizations from Britain, Australia and the United States. Launched in 2004, ICCT formulated a climate change strategy that went beyond the Kyoto Protocol and made specific recommendations to member governments in January 2005.

 

In 2004, Zoi contributed $500 to the presidential campaign of John Kerry, and in 2008 she contributed $2,750 to Barack Obama.

-Matt Bewig

 

Cathy Zoi Blogs (Huffington Post)

Testimony of Cathy Zoi before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming (PDF)

Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (AllGov)