Tayler Amatto, Associate Principal, Charles River Associates
Tayler Amatto is an associate principal in Charles River Associates’ Energy Practice located in Calgary, where she advises clients on investment strategy, energy market participation, and long-term planning across North American electricity and fuel markets.
With a background in both consulting and private equity, Ms. Amatto brings over a decade of experience helping utilities, developers, and public sector agencies navigate market reform, deploy capital, and integrate large-scale energy loads. Her work is grounded in techno-economic analysis, resource adequacy planning, and commercial strategy development for emerging energy technologies.
Ms. Amatto has deep expertise in capacity and energy market reform, large-load integration—particularly for data centers and industrial decarbonization—and early-stage project development. She supports clients in market entry strategy, due diligence, and go/no-go investment decision-making for capital-intensive infrastructure, with a strong focus on energy transition and decarbonization investments. Her advisory work spans utilities, oil and gas, pipeline, agriculture, low-carbon fuels, and manufacturing sectors.
Before joining CRA, Ms. Amatto served as Senior Vice President at Azimuth Capital Management, a private equity firm focused on energy transition investments and held consulting roles at PwC Canada. She supported portfolio companies and clients with strategic planning, valuation, commercial structuring, and stakeholder engagement.
In addition to her professional work, Ms. Amatto serves as Vice President and Board Member of the Energy Leadership Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building a community of connected and solutions-oriented leaders for the evolving energy sector.
Ms. Amatto holds a BA in Economics with a concentration in Energy Economics from the University of Calgary.
Barbara Blakely, Regional Corporate Relations Director, Shell
Barbara became the Director for Corporate Relations for Latin America and the Caribbean for Shell on August 1, 2021. She has worked for Shell for 20 years and before taking on this role she was the VP of External Relations for Projects and Technology in the Netherlands, leading external communications, engagement and social performance of a global organization that runs about $40 billion of annual spend through its supply chains and spends about $1 billion a year on research and development with about 150 projects in different phases of the development cycle. In her current role she leads a regional team accountable for government relations, internal and external communications, non-technical risk management, social performance and stakeholder management across a complex cross-business portfolio that includes upstream, downstream, midstream, NBD and portfolio activities. Barbara has led Corporate Relations in multi-billion projects that have taken FID, and led External Relations for Renewables, Hydrogen and CO2, with global presence.
Barbara has more than 25 years of experience in energy and project delivery and a Diplomatic career for the Mexican Government and crisis management.
Gina Warren, A.L. O'Quinn Chair in Environmental Studies & Co-director of EENR, University of Houston Law Center
Gina S. Warren is the A.L. O’Quinn Chair in Environmental Studies and co-director of the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Center. Prior to joining the Law Center in 2016, she taught at Texas A&M University School of Law (2011-2016) and Duquesne University School of Law (2010-2011). Warren also taught internationally at the University of Cologne in Cologne, Germany (2011) and in coordination with the University of Guanajuato in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (2015). At the Law Center she serves Chair of the Promotion & Tenure and Non-Tenure Track Committee as well as faculty advisor to multiple student organizations such as the First Generation Organization, the Energy and Environment Student Society, the Houston Law Review, and the Student Bar Association. Warren was twice voted the Student Bar Association Professor of the Year (2018-2019 and 2024-2025) and voted faculty graduation speaker by the class of 2020.
Her teaching and scholarship focus on the nexus between the environment, property, social justice, and energy. Her scholarship has appeared in top 20 law review journals, books, and peer-reviewed journals. She is an internationally-recognized scholar with publications in prominent journals such as the Boston University Law Review, the Maryland Law Review, the Missouri Law Review, the Nebraska Law Review, the Idaho Law Review (peer reviewed), the University of Cologne (Germany) Business Law Journal, and the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law. Warren’s research has also been cited by the Colorado Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Texas, and showcased by the Washington Post, among others. Warren authored a book chapter on U.S.-Mexico relations in energy and the environment, and her scholarship has been excerpted in prominent energy and renewable energy textbooks.
She is the past chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Natural Resources and Energy Law, is a member of the Environmental Law, Property Law, and Women’s Law sections, and has served for the last several years on the sections’ sub-committees. Professor Warren has also served on many other committees and boards in her career, including being the law school representative for the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, and an advisory board member for the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators. She is also past chair of academic outreach for the Institute for Energy Law.
Professor Warren was in private practice for several years prior to entering academia. She worked as a litigator in land use, environment, and utility law for the international law firm of Perkins Coie based in Seattle, Washington as well as a litigator in a prominent regional firm Post & Schell based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Professor Warren also completed a clerkship for the Honorable Michael Winkelstein of the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey.
She is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington.