On September 16, the U.S. Senate confirmed Marilyn A. Brown to the Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors.  Brown, a professor of energy policy in the Georgia Tech Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts School of Public Policy, was nominated December 10, 2009, by President Obama for a term expiring May 18, 2012.  She succeeds Susan Richardson Williams, whose term expired. 

Brown has been on the faculty at Georgia Tech since 2006.  Previous to that she had a distinguished career at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. At ORNL, she led several national scenario studies of climate change technology and policy options and held various leadership positions. Her current research addresses the development and deployment of sustainable energy technologies, the design of policy options to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the evaluation of energy programs and policies . At Georgia Tech, her research projects have included an assessment of the $3 billion/year multi-agency R&D portfolio comprising the U.S. Climate Change Technology Program, analysis of the geography of metropolitan carbon footprints, development of a national climate change technology deployment strategy, and an assessment of the cost and availability of supply- and demand-side electricity resources in the Southeast. 

The senate also confirmed to the TVA board, Barbara S. Haskew, a professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University, Neil G. McBride, a long-time public-interest lawyer, Bill Sansom, a former chairman of the TVA Board and president and chief executive officer of Knoxville-based H.T. Hackney Company.  The four join current members of the board: Current members of the TVA Board of Directors are Chairman Dennis Bottorff of Nashville, Tenn.; Mike Duncan of Inez, Ky.; Tom Gilliland, of Blairsville, Ga.; William Graves of Memphis, Tenn., and Howard Thrailkill of Huntsville, Ala.