Born and raised in the Sacramento area, Michael graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in physics. After a short stint as a high school earth science teacher, Michael has served at the Energy Commission for the past 12 years across multiple divisions and programs. He currently serves as the deputy director of the CEC’s Efficiency Division, where he oversees the Building and Appliance Efficiency Standards, Title 24 compliance program, and building energy policy development and planning efforts, which have recently been heavily focused on opportunities to support decarbonization of California’s buildings. Prior to this role, Michael served as manager of the Renewables Portfolio Standard program and before that served in a special coordinator role to implement the numerous ambitious energy policy priorities from 2015’s Senate Bill 350 across state agencies under the oversight of Governor Brown’s Office. He started off his Energy Commission tenure in the Research and Development Division, where he served as a technical lead for renewable energy integration topics and was an original author for the first Electric Program Investment Charge investment plan.