Keynote Speaker 1
Dr. Shay Bahramirad, 2024 PES President
Dr. Shay Bahramirad, Senior Vice President of T&D, Strategy, and Sustainability at LUMA Energy in Puerto Rico, is a prominent industry leader. She holds the role of President at IEEE Power and Energy Society, serves on the editorial board of the Electricity Journal, is a US CIGRE Executive member, an adjunct professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and a founder of IEEE Women in Power. Additionally, she contributes to the United Nations SG7 initiative for Affordable and Clean Energy. With a PhD in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology, she boasts numerous academic publications and holds multiple US patents. Previously, as Vice President of Climate and Resilience at Quanta Technology, she guided cities and utilities in climate change risk assessments and investment strategies. Earlier, as Vice President of Engineering and Smart Grid at ComEd, she spearheaded efforts to ensure the distribution system’s reliability, resiliency, and sustainability, while fostering a community of the future vision inclusive of STEM education for underrepresented groups, particularly girls. Dr. Shay Bahramirad is also recognized as an expert witness in state and federal regulatory proceedings concerning microgrids, energy storage, investment strategies, and distributed energy resources interconnection.
Title: Climate Change, Adaption and Mitigation
Keynote Speaker 2
Dato’ Abdul Razak Bin Abdul Majid
Dato’ Abdul Razak bin Abdul Majid was appointed as Non-Independent Non-Executive Chairman of Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB), effective 27 March 2023. He brings along 50 years of work experience spanning over the whole range of supply chain activities in the energy industry.
He currently serves as a member of the Action Committee for the establishment of the National Energy Center at UNITEN since 2022 and Independent Advisory Panel of Malaysian Petroleum Resources Corporation (MPRC), an entity under the Ministry of Economy, to oversee the development and sustainability of the services companies of the oil & gas sector since 2021. Dato’ Abdul Razak had also served as an Independent Non-Executive Director of Petronas Gas Berhad (PGB) from 2018 to 2023.
He has held various leadership roles in the energy industry, including Chairman of the Energy Commission of Malaysia (2014-2018) and CEO of MyPOWER Corporation for two terms, 2009-2014 and 2018-2020. Over his tenure in MyPOWER Corporation and Energy Commission, he presided over a range of reform initiatives for the Malaysian Electricity Supply Industry (MESI), mainly arising out of the outcome of recommendations from MyPOWER studies. These included streamlining of capacity
planning processes, competitive procurement of generation capacities for both conventional and renewable facilities as well as other other initiatives such as the establishment of ringed-fenced Single Buyer & Grid System Operator entities within the incumbent utility and Incentive-Based Regulation (IBR) framework incorporating fuel cost pass-through mechanism as the tariff setting mechanism for both electricity and gas supply networks. He also guided through the enactment of the Third-Party Access (TPA) framework for the electricity and gas supply industries.
For 36 years, he had served in planning, construction, and operation roles across Lembaga Letrik Negara (LLN) and TNB’s core Divisions, ultimately served as the Company’s Vice President (Generation) and Senior Vice President (Corporate Affairs). He was also seconded to the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime Minister’s Department (1998-2001) to assist in the studies and assessment on the prospects of the restructuring of the Malaysia Electricity Supply Industry, under the Review of Services Sector Program by the agency.
Dato’ Abdul Razak graduated in Electrical Engineering from Brighton University, UK and holds Masters in Business Administration from Ohio University, USA.