Pilot program could expand Stanford policy work in energy

Kelsey Freeman, MS/MA '25, has spent a decade working to ensure that community voices are heard. In 2020, she published an award-winning book, No Option but North, based on nine months interviewing Central American and Mexican migrants in a shelter in central Mexico. This fall, she took on a persistent problem: Some state-level clean energy programs do not fit the needs and sovereign status of tribal nations. This makes the programs harder for tribes to access and limits their impact.

“California Native American tribes are disproportionately subjected to prolonged outages, high energy costs, and lack of electricity access,” said Freeman. “If we can help connect what researchers at Stanford are learning with input directly from tribes, we can see direct policy impact.”

Her new position is somewhat unusual for Stanford University yet may set the model for a larger program at Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy, which is part of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. While employed by the institute as a social science research scholar for a year, Freeman works with the California Energy Commission (CEC), Native American tribes, and Stanford researchers to improve policies impacting tribal energy access, planning, and development. 

“Kelsey is also helping us explore whether and how the Precourt Institute might create a larger one-year fellowship program for recent Stanford graduates,” said the institute’s director, William Chueh, who is also a Stanford professor of materials science and engineering in the School of Engineering, of energy science and engineering in the Doerr School, and of photon science at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

“The embedded-researcher model is an experiment that has worked, at a time when a program such as this is needed more than ever,” said CEC Chair David Hochschild.

Breaking into policy work

Freeman spent much of her early career working in Indigenous communities. “I became interested in Native education, and how education can be a vehicle for asserting tribal sovereignty and nation building,” she said.

In Oregon, Freeman partnered with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs to co-design a college-prep program for Native American students. She saw how federal and state policies often fall short. Timelines and reporting rules frequently do not match tribal governance or staffing capacity, which reduces the effectiveness of the programs. That experience, she said, showed her how program rules built without tribal involvement can undermine well-intentioned efforts.

Freeman’s focus shifted to energy policy after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. She saw an opening for real community benefits in clean-energy development but also gaps in access and awareness. 

To better understand those challenges, Freeman simultaneously earned two master’s degrees at Stanford as a Knight-Hennessy scholar, one in international policy  at the School of Humanities & Sciences and the other in environment and resources in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program at the Doerr School of Sustainability. While doing so, Freeman moved directly into tribal clean-energy work through the Precourt Institute’s Shultz Energy Fellowship. During the summer of 2023, she helped Nevada tribes apply for federal funding through the Nevada Clean Energy Fund. This past summer she supported the CEC’s newly expanded tribal affairs team. 

Nevertheless, Freeman saw that the CEC grappled with the same challenges she had observed in Oregon. Tribes were sometimes consulted after key decisions were made, rather than invited to co-design programs from the start. Former Secretary of State George Shultz, for whom the summer energy policy internship is named, often warned: “If you want me with you on landing the plane, make sure I’m with you on takeoff.” 

The CEC was changing this dynamic by launching a policymaking process in collaboration with tribes across the state. When Katie Taflan Cerneka, assistant director of the Precourt Institute’s educational program, Explore Energy, broached the idea of a year-long position working with the CEC to continue strengthening tribal engagement, Freeman agreed. The nonprofit Noble Reach Foundation is supporting this pilot project with funding and training.

Public-academic-philanthropic collaboration

At the CEC, Freeman works across two policymaking areas: tribal clean-energy projects and tribal workforce development. She is also helping organize 11 regional roundtables across California to gather direct input from tribes on five areas under tribal clean energy, including how to redesign grant programs. Three of these meetings have already taken place, and changes requested by California tribes are making their way through the CEC to its commissioners.

"We're trying to help make sure state programs work for tribes, not the other way around," Freeman explained.

Feedback from these roundtables shapes draft policies that the CEC will then share with tribes for further review and input. Meanwhile, Freeman’s dual Stanford/CEC role allows her to carry this work back to the university, where she connects faculty and other researchers with the policy needs emerging from the CEC’s tribal engagement work. As a Noble Reach scholar, Freeman has benefited from professional development with the foundation, which trains leaders to bridge academia, the private sector, and public service. 

“In a very short period of time, Kelsey has become a core member of the Energy Commission’s tribal energy sovereignty team, which is distributing over $130 million to 35 California Native American tribes to develop solar plus battery microgrids, install EV chargers, and enhance grid resilience,” Hochschild said. “We are fortunate to have her talents at the CEC and would love to see more talented students follow her footsteps into public service.”

Short-term internships offer limited exposure to policymaking. A year-long placement gives early-career researchers the time and responsibility to understand agency processes, influence state priorities in a meaningful way, and explore the possibilities of a career in public policy.

“My hope is that over the course of this year, I can both help write CEC policies that ensure tribes benefit from the clean energy transition and build pathways for more Stanford students to go into public service,” said Freeman.