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Rafael Reyes Executive Director |
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One of three invited Bay Area speakers for the Nissan Leaf Worldwide launch press conference, Rafael Reyes is a leader in clean energy and climate solutions on local and national levels. As Executive Director of the Bay Area Climate Collaborative, Rafael leads strategy and execution for the initiative. This includes the launch of the BACC's Local Government Electric Vehicle Fleet national demonstration project in partnership with the County of Alameda and other partners which secured $2.8 million from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and was launched with San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed in October 2010.
Rafael is co-facilitator of the Bay Area EV Strategic Council and former member of the Sierra Club’s national Board of Directors and Sustainable San Mateo County. Previously Rafael was Program Manager at ecoAmerica where he led large scale partnership projects to engage mainstream Americans on the benefits of environmental progress. This work included leading the development of the Sustainable Education and Economic Development Center, a program with the American Association of Community Colleges to educate the 21st century workforce. With the Sierra Club, Rafael has led numerous grassroots and national initiatives, including spearheading the grassroots clean energy Cool Cities program and other award-winning organizing efforts.
Locally, Rafael led the peninsula's Cool Cities initiative started in 2007, successfully moving over 20 municipalities on the peninsula and south bay to initiate clean energy solutions. He sat on the City of San Mateo’s Sustainability Advisory Committee which developed the city’s climate action plan leading to the recent adoption of a region-leading green building ordinance and other actions. Due in part to these efforts, over a dozen municipalities in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties now have green building standards.
His career includes 15 years in high-tech project management, systems architecture design and business consulting most recently with Hewlett-Packard. Rafael was born in Peru, is fluent in Spanish, and has a Masters degree in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and a dual computer science/anthropology undergraduate degree with honors from UC Santa Cruz.