Sarah Iskander

Background

About Sarah Iskander

I keep ending up in rooms where something new is being built and the rules haven't been written yet.Hyperloop was like that. I joined when the technology didn't have a federal category, let alone a funding pathway. By the time I left, we'd gotten it into the Infrastructure Law and stood up the first regulatory framework. The Department of Energy was like that too, in a different way. I came in as a career civil servant to run Congressional affairs for a $12.5B appropriations portfolio — and then the administration changed over taking us in a different direction. Not a lot of playbook for that one either.Now I'm at the Niskanen Center building relationships & working on the policy side of getting clean energy infrastructure built: transmission, permitting, grid reliability. The kind of work that determines whether ambitious targets stay aspirational or turn into steel in the ground.The through-line across these roles is that I translate. I take something technical or unfamiliar and make it make sense to the people who control the money, the votes, or the regulations. I've done that on the Hill, at federal agencies, at global summits, and in countries where I had to do it in Arabic.Before any of the energy work, I was with UNHCR in Jordan and doing advocacy work in Latin America. Those experiences shaped how I think about policy. If it doesn't reach people, it doesn't count.Always happy to connect with anyone working where energy, technology, and policy collide.