D. Ray Long - About Me

I'm Ray Long and I help the public better understand energy issues. 

Over the past few years I've had the privilege of serving as a communications consultant for the US Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency, the Associate Director for a national non-profit organization, and the educational program manager for a professional development association. My experience encompasses a variety of roles from energy strategic communications, oil & energy policy, energy content development, social media strategy, and event management - where I've organized and implemented eight conferences across the nation over the past decade.

Previously, I studied at Michigan State University (MSU) and Wayne State University (WSU).
The Bachelors of Science degree from MSU in Applied Engineering Sciences (AES) is a program that combines the technical engineering coursework with a concentration in supply chain management - which included courses in finance, marketing, management, and business law. The goal of the AES program was to blend the engineering and business worlds and develop graduates' ability for solid technical problem solving in a business context.
At WSU, my Masters of Science degree is in the Alternative Energy Technology program, where I studied renewable energy systems including hydrogen fuel cell, solar heating and photovoltaic, wind turbine, and biomass conversion.

In 2019, I was named a 2019/2020 Fellow for Securing America's Future Energy‘s Fellows Program. And it was a pleasure to participate with the full group of fellows from inside and outside of government, each passionate about advancing a national conversation on the future of American energy security and infrastructure.

Today I continue to write on energy policy and other topics my blog: raylong.co/blog

Some of my favorite pieces include:

Please feel free to contact me at any time using the social media buttons below, or directly via email using the envelope button furthest to the right.

Experience

ICF Next (ICF)

Energy Communications Manager
Washington DC
2019-2021

ICFNext.jpg

ICF Next is the dedicated marketing and experience agency within ICF. I served as the Energy Communications Manager in a dual role supporting Department of Energy clients. The Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity (OE) and Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) provide national leadership to ensure that the Nation’s energy delivery system is secure, resilient, and reliable. As part of the role, I wrote the 2020-21 communications plan and strategy for the Office of Electricity. This plan included internal communications components and I developed and released four internal newsletters for OE in 2020. I developed and published almost all of OE’s website blog, press release, and other content. And I developed a plan for the office to begin an email marketing strategy for the first time, including the use of tools such as Granicus and GovDelivery to collect and manage stakeholder emails. Finally, I developed the strategy for OE’s first dedicated social media accounts launched OE’s first Twitter account @DOEelectricity in the Fall of 2020.

Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH)

Energy Communication Specialist
Washington DC
2015 - 2019

Energy is essential to modern life, but the subject is also large, complex, and often confusing. I worked as an Energy Communication Specialist on strategic communication initiatives for Booz Allen clients. Because the importance of energy must be translated into messaging that resonates with the general public.

At BAH, I initially provided strategic communications support for the US Department of Defense, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Installation Energy, working to reimagine their messaging and generate excitement in the activities and accomplishments of the office.

Next I spent three years serving as an energy communicator for DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) where I developed content for over 300 ARPA-E projects, helped develop the overall ARPA-E communications strategy, and served as @ARPAE as I managed the agency’s 20,000 follower Twitter account.

Finally, I served as the first Change and Communications Lead for the Accelerator. Launched in April 2018, the Accelerator is the internal Booz Allen Hamilton program enabling proactive career mobility and project staffing. Booz Allen employees can use Accelerator resources to explore new professional opportunities in line with their career goals and preferences. Here I worked to developed the overall Accelerator communications strategy that increased awareness across the 22,000-person firm, clarified Accelerator offerings, and built trust for the program.  

National Association for Environmental Management (NAEM)

Educational Program Manager
Washington DC
2013 - 2014

NAEM is a professional association for members of the corporate environmental, health, and safety (EHS) community. The NAEM membership includes both individual members as well as corporate members from some of the world's leading companies. And NAEM serves that community through peer-led conferences, benchmarking research, and building a network for professional development. 

In my role, I managed three conferences in 2014 with 125 attendees each. My work included agenda development, speaker recruitment, website development, marketing, catering, transportation, and venue management. These conferences included:

 

My other responsibilities at NAEM included:

  • Managed NAEM’s monthly webinar series presented by members of NAEM’s affiliate council.

  • Development and publication of NAEM’s bi-weekly “Executive Brief” newsletter.

  • Research and issue tracking of important developments in the environmental, health, safety & sustainability (EHS&S) space.

  • Partnered with NAEM’s marketing manager, IT manager, and communication manager for strategic planning related to the association’s learning programs.

Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO-USA)

Associate Director
Washington DC
2011 – 2013

ASPO-USA is a 501c(3) non-profit, non-partisan education and outreach organization dedicated to helping America understand and adapt to an oil-constrained world. ASPO-USA is most well-known for the Peak Oil issue, and Peak Oil simply means the maximum rate of global oil production. Peak Oil is simply a number, usually expressed in millions of barrels of oil per day. The Peak Oil Debate is all of the discussion about that number: how much oil is produced per day at peak; will the peak occur soon or many years in the future; what are the implications of the peak for the global economy; how will oil production proceed after peak (fast decline, slow decline, no decline). There’s even a strong debate about how to properly define “oil” for accounting purposes. 

ASPO-USA membership consists of petroleum engineers, oil geologists, economists, environmentalists, commodity traders and many others. And ASPO-USA served as a forum for these members to convene and debate the future of oil and natural gas production, through in-depth webinars, publications, and most notably the annual ASPO-USA conference, the preeminent conference of its type.

As ASPO-USA’s Associate Director I played a part in all areas of the organization from conference and event planning, to publication management, media outreach, website maintenance, video production, and social media management. 

Working for a small organization teaches you to wear many hats, the willingness to get your hands dirty in tasks big or small, and to have excellent time management in what is often a 7-day/week labor of love. 

Some personal highlights of my time with ASPO-USA: I’m very proud that I had the opportunity to work closely with many of the top global thinkers in these issues, many of whom were heroes of mine before I became a staff member and remain so to this day. We were fortunate and honored to work closely with the office of Rep. Roscoe Bartlett known as “Mr. Peak Oil” of the US Congress, to secure the Congressional Auditorium inside the US Capitol as a venue for our 2011 annual conference. We published our daily publication to our readership 6-days/week and two weekly in-depth updates consistently. And for me, my role was my opportunity to learn the skills needed for website maintenance, video editing, and social media – because the work had to be done, and our usual gameplan was to “figure it out” – find help when we could, teach ourselves when we couldn't. Finally, one of the accomplishments most important to me is that we were able to convert and upload videos from six years of ASPO-USA conferences and offer the videos online. Now and forever the public can refer to these videos to examine what was said in these debates about the future of energy.

Working together as a staff of two with executive director Jan Mueller and with invaluable help from ASPO-USA’s board of directors, advisory board, funders, volunteers, and friends – we advanced the cause of greater public understanding of our energy economy.

My full responsibilities at ASPO-USA included:

  • Conference and event planning for the 2011 annual conference in Washington DC and the 2012 annual conference in Austin, TX. This included agenda development, speaker recruitment, website production and marketing. I also developed a number of smaller events, and prior to becoming a staff member I served as a volunteer for the 2010 conference.

  • Editing and production of daily and weekly publications including “Peak Oil Review” and “Peak Oil News” both summaries of recent news in the world of oil production.

  • Connecting national energy journalists to the ASPO-USA network of energy experts.

  • ASPO-USA member management through Salesforce and other tools.

  • Website management using Wordpress for the ASPO-USA family of websites.

  • Management of the ASPO-USA social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube).

  • Video editing and marketing for the ASPO-USA webinar series and conference videos.

  • Managed meetings/conference calls for the ASPO-USA Board of Directors and Advisory Board

D&R International

Water Heater Manager & Project Analyst
Silver Spring, MD
2007 - 2011

D&R International is a consulting company based in Silver Spring, Maryland. And during my time at D&R I worked as a consultant in support of the ENERGY STAR program for clients in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Energy (DOE). ENERGY STAR is the widely recognized labeling standard for energy efficient products, and the label is awarded to products that meet specific energy use criteria. D&R has supported its clients and their program partners by analyzing the technical potential and market conditions for ENERGY STAR qualified appliances, lighting, and windows; helping develop specifications for these products; providing marketing and communications services; and assisting with program design. D&R has focused particularly on creating opportunities for retailers, manufacturers, and program sponsors to work together to advance the visibility of ENERGY STAR and increase the market share of qualified products. D&R has also worked with individual partners such as Whirlpool, GE, and Sears to help design programs, create marketing materials, and host events that raise the profile of ENERGY STAR.

Coming out of my graduate school work in renewable energy, my original role at D&R was research and analysis in solar, small wind, and micro combined heat & power (microCHP) systems which were being considered for a new ENERGY STAR product category at the time. Next, I moved over to the appliance team focused on refrigerators, room air conditioners, clothes washers, and dishwashers. I was part of the metrics group that developed energy savings metrics for the appliance products (energy saved per year, dollars saved per year, et cetera). The metrics we developed were used by retail and manufacturing partners to produce their marketing campaigns as well as utility partners to develop their energy efficiency rebate programs. However the most important role of the metrics group was to provide data in support of ENERGY STAR product revisions, the occasional raising of product standards to ensure that only the most efficient products continue to qualify. We also maintained the ENERGY STAR product list for these appliance products, working with manufacturers to update and maintain the list of qualified appliances. 

When residential water heaters were proposed as a new product category, I joined the effort to work with manufacturers, retailers, and our government clients to assist in the eventual launch of the new category in early 2009. Eventually I was promoted to manager for the water heater category in 2011.

D&R was also responsible for producing annual market profiles for appliances products, such as the Water Heater Market Profile where I was a co-author. These publications were annual snapshots of a product category and its status in the marketplace. Through my work with the metrics group, I contributed data to these publications for all appliance categories.

Serving on the technical side of the company also meant that I had to become very familiar with the operation of the appliance products and the test procedures used to determine their energy usage. And it led me to serve as one of the appliance energy efficiency experts for the company. During my time at D&R, any email sent to the info@energystar.gov email address came directly to me. And I answered over 2,000 messages from consumers related to appliances, energy efficiency, and the ENERGY STAR program.

Finally, I was involved in a number of tasks outside the scope of our normal appliance-related work. D&R was part of a team that implemented the State Energy-Efficient Appliance Rebate Program (SEEARP), $300 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act made available to states and territories to promote the purchase of ENERGY STAR qualified appliances. And I contributed to this effort in my metrics capacity.

The Buildings Energy Databook is a collection of statistics on residential and commercial building energy use produced for the US Department of Energy, and I contributed data to the 2009 and 2010 editions.

Lastly, the ENERGY STAR Appliance Partner Meeting is the annual meeting between officials of the EPA/DOE and ENERGY STAR stakeholders including manufacturing, utility, and retail partners. I helped execute the 2008 meeting in Long Beach, CA and the 2009 meeting in Chicago, IL - developing event management skills that would serve me well in the future.

Education

Masters of Science in Alternative Energy Technology

Wayne State University
Detroit, MI
 

Bachelors of Science in Applied Engineering Sciences

Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI
 

Study Abroad in Cultural Studies

Japan Center for Michigan Universities
Hikone City, Japan