Cathy Zoi, a former acting Energy undersecretary and assistant secretary in the Obama administration, has been appointed to the board of a California-based wind energy startup.

Makani Power Inc. is developing kitelike wind turbines and has received support from Google and DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. The company expects it will be able to offer its products on the market in 2016.

Confirmed in 2009, Zoi joined the Obama administration as assistant secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. She left while serving as an undersecretary in 2011 to help start a green-energy venture capital group called Silver Lake Kraftwerk (Greenwire, March 2, 2011).

"She has a lot of experience with industry and energy policy," and she will draw on that experience while on Makani's board, said Andrea Swenson Dunlap, the company's director of multimedia archives. Dunlap said the board meets a couple of times a year, and Zoi will continue to work at Silver Lake.

In addition to her time with the Obama administration, Zoi was chief of staff for the White House Office on Environmental Policy and helped launch the Energy Star program under President Clinton, according to her Silver Lake bio. She also was an energy economist at Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

Zoi earned her bachelor's degree in geology from Duke University and a master's in engineering from Dartmouth College.