NOTE: if you are on a phone, this will be easier to read if you turn your phone sideways.
Welcome to our info hub for our Ask the Experts: Data Centers meeting.
This event took place on the evening of 4/24/2026 at the Quinechett Pavilion in Urbancrest. It was well attended and went mostly without a hitch baring some sound issues in the room. You may notice. some spots in the video where the audio is a little strange, particularly in the crowd, but we cobbled it together best we could and for our first Ask the Experts session, it was a huge success!
Video Link
Our Panel of Experts
Bailey Sandin
Work & Wages Fellow
Policy Matters Ohio – We create a more vibrant, equitable, sustainable and inclusive Ohio through research, strategic communications, coalition building, and policy advocacy.
Bailey Sandin is our work and wages researcher. Originally from Youngstown, Ohio, Bailey moved to Columbus in 2016 on a mission to create a better Ohio for working families. Sandin attended the University of Akron where she studied Political Science and minored in Arabic. Her passion for labor issues largely comes from her father’s work as a union millwright at General Motors Lordstown. Prior to Policy Matters, Sandin served in the Ohio Legislature as a Legislative Aide and coordinated various workforce development programs in Central Ohio. Outside of her policy work, Sandin is an avid music lover and staunch supporter of the Northeast and Central Ohio music scenes. She brings to Policy Matters a strong sense of community building and a focus on making the nuances of labor policy easily digestible for the average Ohioan.
Maureen Willis
Ohio Consumers’ Counsel and Agency Director
Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel
The Ohio Consumers’ Counsel advocates and educates to secure for Ohioans affordable, reliable, and equitable residential utility services that are essential to their well-being.
OCC is focused on ensuring residential and small business consumers are not subsidizing infrastructure build for large high load consumers. OCC advocates for fair cost causation—those driving the need for new infrastructure should bear the cost. OCC advocates for forward-looking planning, transparency, and enforceable reliability standards so existing consumers don’t see degraded service.
Maureen Willis, Ohio Consumers’ Counsel and Agency Director, previously served as Acting Legal Director starting in April of 2023, before that spent eight years as the Office of Consumers’ Counsel (OCC) Senior Counsel. In total, Ms. Willis has devoted more than 27 years of her career to representing residential utility consumers.
Cathy Cowan Becker
Board President and Hilliard Activist
Save Ohio Parks
Save Ohio Parks is a statewide citizens group concerned about protecting Ohio public lands from oil and gas extraction. Formed after the Ohio legislature amended a law with no public notice or testimony requiring state agencies to lease public land for fracking, Save Ohio Parks has helped thousands of Ohio citizens file comments on dozens of nominations of state parks and wildlife areas for oil and gas extraction; analyzed public documents to show the state experiences an oil and gas accident or incident every 1.5 days; and proved that over 1,000 comments purporting to support fracking Ohio state parks were not written by the people whose names were on the comments, resulting in a new attorney general rule making this a violation of Ohio consumer protection law. Starting in 2022 as a grassroots group serving all Ohioans, Save Ohio Parks is now an IRS-recognized 501c4 and 501c3 organization.
Cathy Cowan Becker is co-founder and board president of Save Ohio Parks, a statewide citizens group concerned about protecting Ohio state parks and public lands from oil and gas extraction. She is a longtime environmental activist in Central Ohio, most known for leading Ready for 100 Columbus, which advocated for the city to launch the Clean Energy Columbus 100% renewable electric aggregation program, the largest in the Midwest, and create a strong ambitious climate action plan. Cathy also co-led the Clean Grove City campaign, which passed 100% renewable electric aggregation in Grove City, and directed the Columbus sustainability nonprofit Simply Living. Her current day job is as Responsible Finance Campaign Director for Green America, the nation’s oldest and largest green economy nonprofit.
Dr. Amber McNair
Founder of AV McNair LLC
AV McNair LLC
AV McNair’s mission is to improve the social benefits of air mobility infrastructure through high-impact planning, training, engagement, and research services. We aim to harmonize the many land use and transportation planning processes that influence air transportation systems.
Former faculty at Ohio State, Dr McNair now runs AV McNair LLC as an independent planning consultant while continuing to teach graduate-level coursework at the University of Washington. With training in both civil engineering and city planning, Amber is an expert in land use planning for public infrastructure. Her focus area is understanding community impacts and land use planning of large transportation facilities, mainly airports.
Dr McNair knows what happens to communities when large infrastructure lands next door — because she’s spent her career studying exactly that. As a city and regional planning expert trained at UC Berkeley, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. McNair has focused her research on the planning processes that shape how major facilities get sited, who bears the cost, and what tools communities have to fight back. Her specialty is large transportation infrastructure — airports, freight facilities, autonomous systems — but the questions she asks translate directly to any large-scale development: Who decides? Who pays? Who lives with the consequences?
Becca Pollard
Executive Director
Buckeye Environmental Network
Empowering grassroots organizations, individuals, and local communities to advocate for environmental justice.
Becca Pollard (she/they) was hired as Interim Executive Director in 2024 after serving on Buckeye Environmental Network’s board for almost seven years. Becca grew up in the Olentangy watershed in Central Ohio and returned in 2016 after spending a little over a decade in Oregon. Becca was moved to action when the Bureau of Land Management opened up the Wayne National Forest in Southeast Ohio for fracking and has since worked on numerous forest, energy, and transportation campaigns. She has a background in Organizing, Communications, and Operations and a passion for social and environmental justice. Becca believes effective environmental work must be rooted in the relationships we build and nourish with the communities and places we love. Becca currently lives in the Alum Creek watershed with her daughter.