Mary Palmer

Mary Palmer is the Director of Energy Equity & Inclusion at the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA). She is responsible for guiding SEPA’s efforts to help its members embed equity into their organizations in a way that creates enduring change, aligning SEPA’s mission to accelerate the achievement of a carbon-free energy system with its vision of a new, more equitable legacy of systems and processes.

She has more than six years of experience in public policy, grassroots community engagement, and coalition building at organizations such as the League of Women Voters, Women Creating Change, and Global Vision International. At Austin Energy, she led initiatives that advanced the goals of the Resource, Generation, and Climate Protection Plan for five years.

Mary was recognized as a “Rising Star” at the 2023 Women’s Energy Summit’s Rising Star Forum and has served on the boards of the Texas Solar Energy Society and the Austin Community College Engineering Technology Advisory Committee. She holds a Bachelor of Applied Arts and Sciences in business and public relations from Texas State University and is currently completing a Master of Business Administration from St. Edward’s University.

Her proudest achievement is working with local communities and volunteers from all over the world to install rainwater harvesting systems totaling 82,900 liters of potable, accessible water to residents of Fiji.