Gil Bareng is the founder and chief executive officer of Bareng Corporation, a real estate investment and development company focused on building infrastructure for human potential. With more than two decades of experience in architecture, public-school facilities, planning and community-centered development, he connects land, housing, education, workforce, finance, culture and community needs into integrated development strategies. His work emphasizes relationship-based, long-horizon projects that create value beyond the property itself and strengthen local opportunity.

Scott Collins serves as assistant city manager for the city of San Luis Obispo. He oversees the city’s community services group, including the Community development, Parks and Recreation, Public Works and Utilities departments. Before joining the city in December 2024, Collins was executive director of the Housing Authority of San Luis Obispo and previously served for five years as city manager of Morro Bay. He brings extensive experience in local-government administration, housing, infrastructure, land-use implementation and coordination across public agencies and community partners.

Jeremy Cook works at the intersection of sustainable infrastructure, energy systems and data-center development. Over more than 15 years, he has worked across renewable energy, carbon capture, distributed energy-resource management, virtual power plants, energy-market forecasting, data centers and water and wastewater infrastructure. He has prior leadership roles at Noya, GridBeyond and ENGIE Impact, where he established a renewable-energy advisory practice. He brings a practical perspective on turning land into infrastructure-ready platforms and coordinating landowners, utilities, developers, regulators and communities.

Brett Earnest is Suffolk Construction’s general manager for mission critical and advanced manufacturing. He brings more than two decades of construction and operational leadership to complex, schedule-intensive projects. Before joining Suffolk, he led major teams and project portfolios in the Pacific Northwest, including aviation, convention-center and healthcare work. At Suffolk, he focuses on the delivery of missioncritical and advanced-manufacturing facilities, combining construction execution, client relationships, trade-partner coordination, safety and technology. His perspective is especially relevant to the cost, schedule, labor and constructability challenges of data-center development.

Tom Fowler is a professor of architecture and director of Cal Poly’s Graduate Program in Architecture and Community Interdisciplinary Design Studio. A licensed architect and fellow of the AIA, he has spent more than three decades advancing interdisciplinary, technology-enabled architectural education. His work integrates design, building technology, constructability and collaboration across architecture, engineering, construction, business and community partners. Fowler has led complex high-rise, design-build, and community-serving studios and has received major honors, including the CSU Wang Family Excellence Award, Cal Poly Distinguished Teaching Award, and ACSA Distinguished Professor recognition.

Erica Garaffo leads strategic energy-customer development for the city of San José, with a particular focus on large electric loads. Her work integrates energy and utility systems with economic-development strategy and civic partnerships, helping the city plan for investment while addressing infrastructure capacity, resilience and sustainability. A San José native, Garaffo has a background in industrial engineering and a master’s degree in public policy from Cal Poly. She brings a systems-oriented municipal perspective to the opportunities and tradeoffs created by data centers and other power-intensive development.

Hamed Ghoddusi is director of the Cal Poly Real Estate Initiative and a finance professor at Cal Poly’s Orfalea College of Business. His research spans housing, natural resource economics, technology and risk management. Before entering academia, he worked as a management consultant, model builder and analyst with national and international organizations across three continents. He brings a cross-disciplinary, data-driven perspective to land-use and local economic development challenges and teaches courses in housing development finance and advanced analytics.

Russ Levanway is chief financial officer of REACH Central Coast, where he leads financial strategy, budgeting, contracting, board-committee work and organizational sustainability. Before joining REACH, he founded and scaled a nationally recognized information-technology firm and developed a record as a trusted business adviser. At REACH, he helps translate regional economic-development ambitions into disciplined financial and operating plans. He brings a Central Coast perspective on investment attraction, infrastructure readiness, workforce development and the long-term regional value that major technology and energy projects can create.

John Miranda is a lecturer in Cal Poly’s Orfalea College of Business and a research fellow with Nemertes. He retired from Intel in late 2025 after more than three decades, most recently serving as a senior director in the Corporate Strategy Office. His work has spanned corporate foresight, competitive strategy, data-center and AI markets, software transformation and sustainability. Miranda now teaches client consulting at Cal Poly and brings a technology-industry perspective grounded in strategy, energy efficiency and data center systems.

Dawn Ortiz-Legg represents District 3 on the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors. The board’s responsibilities include land use, natural resource stewardship, economic development, public safety, social services and public health. Before elected office, Ortiz-Legg built a career in energy infrastructure and efficiency and spent almost a decade overseeing electric transmission and distribution maintenance. She holds a master’s degree in international public policy from Johns Hopkins SAIS and brings a distinctive combination of local governance, land-use and energyinfrastructure experience.

Nick Prescott has more than two decades of experience in commercial-property markets. He brings a market-oriented perspective to data center development, including the commercial judgment required to evaluate sites, structure opportunities, assemble partners and move emerging infrastructure projects toward execution.

Wil Smith leads Greenlaw Partners, a Californiabased real estate development and operating company with a large portfolio of acquisitions, dispositions and development activity. He brings a developer’s perspective on entitlement risk, project execution, capital discipline and the difference between theoretically possible projects and projects that can actually be delivered.

Karen Houston Tillman leads economicdevelopment and entrepreneurship initiatives at Cal Poly, serving as associate executive director of economic development and advisor to the president. She brings nearly three decades of technology-sector leadership, including senior communications roles at Oracle, Cisco, GoDaddy, and Brex. Her experience spans global communications, crisis management, corporate strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship. At Cal Poly, she connects university capabilities with regional priorities in technology, energy, aerospace, workforce development and community-centered economic growth.