Renewable Energy Lobbyists: Clean Sustainable Green Power & Climate Change Government Incentives

Our Team

Murray S. Liebman, Esq.
President

Murray Liebman founded Liebman & Associates, Inc. ("L&A") in 1997 to provide strategic counsel to senior executives of organizations ranging from Fortune 10 to small entrepreneurial companies on energy and environmental technology issues.

Mr. Liebman served as Government Relations Director for the American Gas Association (AGA), a trade association comprising over 190 natural gas utilities delivering gas to more than 60 million homes and businesses in all 50 states. Together, AGA members account for more than 90 percent of the natural gas delivered in the United States. He directed the Natural Gas Industry's Research, Development and Deployment (RD&D) Initiative. This Initiative is comprised of natural gas producers, pipelines, distribution companies and equipment manufacturers. Mr. Liebman also served as the RD&D Chairman of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. In these capacities, he helped establish the groups' technology priorities and investment commitments. Mr. Liebman has testified before Congressional Subcommittees on numerous occasions and educated Executive Branch policy-makers at all levels.

Prior to the AGA, Mr. Liebman served as Executive Vice President of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). SEIA is comprised of 150 manufacturers and utilities across North America. In this capacity, he advanced regulatory, policy, and financing opportunities to increase solar sales worldwide.

Mr. Liebman's government and political experience is significant. He worked at the US Departments of Energy and the Interior, and at the White House Office of Environmental Policy. At the White House, he was responsible for co-creating the President's Council for Sustainable Development. Mr. Liebman served three years as a Presidential appointee at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. At DOE, he helped manage the world's largest program developing and commercializing clean energy technologies across the power, industrial, building and transportation sectors ($1.4 billion annual budget).

Mr. Liebman is an energy and environmental attorney. Prior to coming to Washington, DC he practiced with a boutique litigation firm in his hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is admitted to practice law in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. He earned a Juris Doctorate (J.D.) with honors from Tulane Law School and a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree concentrating in energy and environmental law from the Georgetown University Law Center.

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Kimberley Anne Kendall, Esq.
Vice President, Natural Resources & Business Continuity

Kim Kendall comes to Liebman & Associates with more than 20 years experience with federal and state government, spanning the executive and legislative branches. During this time, her areas of expertise have included natural resources, clean energy technologies, and business continuity. Before joining L&A she served five years in senior positions at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Ms. Kendall was an attorney in the Office of the General Counsel where she focused on natural resource damage assessment and restoration cases. Ms. Kendall was also senior advisor to the Undersecretary for Oceans and Atmosphere where she was credited with establishing a federally protected sanctuary for horseshoe crabs. Immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 she co-chaired, with NOAA's General Counsel, an intra-agency task force that developed NOAA's Continuity of Operations Plan and for this effort was awarded the Agency's highest honor, the Administrator's Award.

For seven years, Ms. Kendall served at the US Department of Energy (DOE) as a senior advisor in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) where she created and administered the federal government's Million Solar Roofs Initiative and had responsibility for the promotion of instituting pollution prevention and energy efficiency technologies and best practices for federal government buildings. Ms. Kendall spent several years in DOE's Policy and International Affairs Office where she supported DOE in bi-lateral discussions and trade missions with India. During her tenures at DOE and NOAA Ms. Kendall maintained a security clearance.

Ms. Kendall commenced her extensive career in environmental and natural resource issues as an attorney at the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. When in Massachusetts she worked for a number of years in the Boston Office of Senator John Kerry. Her educational background includes a Juris Doctorate (J.D.) from the New England School of Law and she is a Member of the Massachusetts Bar.

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Kara D'Onofrio Byler
Vice President of Government Affairs

Kara D'Onofrio Byler is Vice President of Government Affairs for Liebman & Associates, and works directly with Members of Congress, Congressional staff and senior Executive Branch Agency managers to secure technical, financial and policy support for client initiatives. Ms. D'Onofrio Byler is actively engaged in technology solutions and policy development for the energy, telecom, utility and high-tech industries and is responsible for developing strategies relating to renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy availability and reliability, climate change, energy tax incentives and appropriations. She has been instrumental in securing multi-million dollar appropriations, executive branch agency grants and legislative language for L&A clients.

Ms. D'Onofrio Byler adds additional client value through her development of business-to-business transactions involving large-scale residential, commercial, and industrial community and facility development and technology deployment. She also brings to L&A a substantive background in other aspects of public affairs, including media strategy, speech writing and event logistics.

Throughout her career, Ms. D'Onofrio Byler has developed over (70) high-profile events of worldwide dignitaries, ranging from Presidents of nations to Supreme Court Justices, from corporate CEOs to television celebrities, from George Tenet (former Director of Central Intelligence) to Dr. Paul Wolfowitz (former Deputy Secretary of Defense), and a wide assortment of Congressional leaders in between.

Prior to joining L&A, Ms. D'Onofrio Byler served as Deputy Director of Protocol and Events in the Office of Public Affairs at Georgetown University. In this position, Ms. D'Onofrio Byler executed all aspects of high-profile events, including logistical timelines, security, transportation flow, facilities, administrator briefings, and media strategy. While at Georgetown, she also served as the university liaison with prominent external organizations.

Additionally, Ms. D'Onofrio Byler has held positions at a national security think tank and on Capitol Hill where she began her career in public affairs conducting legislative research and developing materials for the press on key policy issues.

Ms. D'Onofrio Byler graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University with a major in Government and minor in English.

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Whit Allen

Whit Allen advises Liebman & Associates, Inc. (L&A) and its clients as an independent contractor, on clean energy technologies, providing strategic business, technical and government policy support across the entire "cleantech" spectrum. Mr. Allen works directly with National Laboratory and Executive Branch Agency managers to develop technical partnerships in support of client initiatives. He also facilitates business-to-business relationships for clients, having spent the past two decades successfully developing energy technology businesses worldwide.

In his previous executive roles, spanning corporate board and officer positions as well as general management of a $250 million organization with 160 employees, Mr. Allen has engaged stakeholders in both venture startup and Fortune 100 corporate environments. His leadership experience ranges from strategic market, product and business planning to worldwide alliance, sales force, operations and business development in over 30 countries around the globe. He has also demonstrated success in high-tech, complex sales across the telecom, industrial, utility, government and OEM markets; in creating R&D, manufacturing and marketing joint ventures; and in lobbying governmental organizations in the US, Brazil and Mexico.

Prior to L&A, Mr. Allen served as the Executive Vice President of Business Development at Sure Power Corporation, the pioneer of high availability distributed generation systems for mission-critical applications with a widely acclaimed fuel cell system installed at the First National Bank of Omaha data center. Sure Power retained L&A, and through this relationship won multi-year, multi-million dollar awards from the US Departments of Energy and Transportation.

Prior to joining Sure Power, he was Global Sales Vice President for the Power Systems division of Lucent Technologies, a $1.6B leader in DC power system solutions for the telecommunications industry, and led a turnaround of the division's business in Asia. Before being promoted to that position, Mr. Allen was Managing Director of Latin America where he personally developed a $100M business from scratch and was presented with Lucent's highest sales honor. Prior to his tenure at Lucent, he directed high-tech sales across the globe for AT&T's Microelectronics Group and served in marketing, sales and technical capacities for other AT&T divisions.

Mr. Allen is fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese and earned a Master's degree (International MBA) from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, where he graduated with distinction, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University. The author of numerous technical papers on critical power systems and a lecturer on the subject of distributed generation, his career has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and his opinions have appeared in the New York Times.

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Livi Kerszenbaum
Chief of Staff

Livi Kerszenbaum serves as a senior project manager at Liebman & Associates with responsibility for State and Federal Government project development and advocacy, economic analysis, and strategic planning relating to climate change and clean energy mandates. Ms. Kerszenbaum comes to L&A with a strong background in business, science and technology, project management, and economic policy.

Before joining L&A, Ms. Kerszenbaum was a program coordinator at both the California and Washington, DC offices for the Institute on Science for Global Policy. The Institute maintains the mission of linking science-based understanding with government, private sector, and foundation decision-making. At the Institute, Ms. Kerszenbaum performed research, cost/benefit analysis and advocacy supporting science and technology advances in the areas of emerging and persistent infectious disease, energy security, global climate change, information security, and nanotechnology.

Ms. Kerszenbaum also previously served as manager for multi-million dollar projects at Pankl Aerospace Systems, a California manufacturer of flight critical, complex, tubular products for the aerospace industry with customers such as Sikorsky, Bell Helicopter, and Pratt & Whitney.

Ms. Kerszenbaum has enjoyed contributing to various projects including wind energy technology, child safety devices, the Merage Foundation for U.S. Israeli Trade, and various environmental conservation programs.

Her educational background includes a Bachelors of Science from the University of California at San Diego and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of California at Irvine.

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Jon Chestnut

Jon Chestnut comes to L&A as an independent contractor, with more than 20 years of experience as a senior engineer for Verizon Communications. He has demonstrated success in project management, power availability and reliability, energy eficiency, distributed generation and sustainability. Mr. Chestnut brings a wealth of telecommunications industry experience designing, building and upgrading corporate assets and infrastructure. As a result of his commitment to performance excellence, accountability, and energy and environmental stewardship, he is the recipient of numerous awards for technical achievement and customer service.

In his career at Verizon while serving on the Energy Board of Directors, Mr. Chestnut was the technical, political, and economic subject matter expert on new energy and power generation technologies for critical network facilities. He thoroughly investigated emerging and commercially available technologies, identifying those with the greatest bottom-line potential. In this position at Verizon, he worked closely with L&A to identify federal and state government financial and technical assistance grants to realize world-class infrastructure and network enhancements. He also provided leadership across organizational lines of business to create teams for field demonstrations, developed business case and regional deployment plans, and secured corporate approval for multi-million dollar projects.

While at Verizon, Mr. Chestnut managed many highly successful and visible alternative energy, infrastructure and corporate real estate projects. The Zeckendorf Fuel Cell Project on Long Island, New York, was a fuel cell and engine-based high efficiency combined heat and power (CHP) project that was selected as the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) "Energy Project of the Year." For this project and with L&A's support, Verizon won the US Department of Energy and US Environmental Protection Agency "Corporate Partner of the Year" Awards. The Central Office (CO) of the Future Project considered high efficiency direct current (DC) alternatives to power the Verizon network and earned Mr. Chestnut a "Gold Circle Award", Verizon's highest employee honor. He also developed and program-managed other energy efficiency, alternative and renewable energy initiatives that included a variety of building, wind and energy storage technologies and best practices.

Mr. Chestnut earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University and is both an AEE Certified Energy Manager (CEM) and Building Energy Professional (BEP). He also holds a variety of training certificates in energy technologies such as building engineering, electrical and mechanical systems design, HVAC monitoring and controls, and building automation systems, from organizations such as Bellcore and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

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Joe Greenberg, Ph.D.

Joe Greenberg comes to L&A, as an independent contractor, with expertise in the areas of corporate and business unit strategy, business development, marketing, and product and project management. Dr. Greenberg serves on L&A's technical team supporting its clients with strategy and government proposal development.

Prior to joining L&A, Dr. Greenberg was a senior leader of the Products team at Plextronics, Inc. responsible for the company's product strategy and roadmap. He led multiple product development teams in defining, creating, pricing and launching new products, including Plextronics' award-winning Organic Photovoltaic Inks. His responsibilities included alignment of all commercial and government programs with the company's product roadmap. In this capacity, he built relationships with federal and local government agencies and sub-contractors to build the Plextronics brand, fulfill contract deliverables and expand opportunities.

Prior to joining Plextronics, Dr. Greenberg was with Applied Materials, Inc. where he led strategic planning, market analysis and business forecasting for a $1B+ business unit and played a central role in growing the business by 5+ points of market share in a $4B sector of the semiconductor capital equipment industry. Prior to joining Applied Materials, he was a consultant with McKinsey & Company where he led clients in fact-based decision making to deliver substantial improvements in operating results and managerial effectiveness in the high tech, healthcare, and finance sectors.

Dr. Greenberg holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Brown University and earned his doctorate in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University.

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