Weaving a new energy future: Jane Woodward honored with Distinguished Alumni Award

In 1980, Jane Woodward took a Stanford class about energy systems that changed her life – full stop.

“It was like I’d found the keys to the kingdom,” she said, confessing that the class so inspired her that she went to the phone booth and called the famed authors of both of the course textbooks, one on the geopolitics of energy (Energy Future by Daniel Yergin) and the other on the opportunities for radical improvements in efficiency (Soft Energy Paths by Amory Lovins), just to say, “I love your book and it has changed the way I see the world.”

Fast forward nearly 45 years, and Woodward, MS ’82, MBA ’87, has had a strong hand in the current version of that very class – now called Understand Energy – for more than three decades. A big-picture thinker, an entrepreneur, an investor, and a launcher of dreams, she has continued to spot gaps in the Stanford energy ecosystem and stepped in to help fill them.

On Oct. 25, Woodward was honored with the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability’s 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award, which recognizes alumni who have made highly significant, long-lasting contributions to civil, government, business, or academic communities.

Arun Majumdar, the school’s Chester Naramore Dean, presented the award to Woodward.

“I have had the great privilege to have known Jane since I joined Stanford and the Precourt Institute for Energy,” he said. “She is what we might call a super-connector – and I’m going to paraphrase this as a super-conductor – because her role in connecting people and reducing friction in that process is absolutely spectacular.”

The magnetism of Stanford

Woodward has deep roots in Silicon Valley; in fact, she was born at Stanford Hospital.

“I tell my Stanford students, with a twinkle in my eye,” she said, “‘I think the doctors might’ve stuck some sort of magnet inside of me when I was born there. I haven’t gone very far for very long.’” In 65 years, she has spent all but six of those in Palo Alto, much of that time within one block of campus.

Her proximity and service to the campus community have been a boon to the university.

“Everything I do at Stanford I call my incredibly rewarding avocation. Listen, I don’t cook much and I don’t play pickleball. I would like to do those things – but I like this a lot more. So, it’s my hardcore avocation,” she said. “But I couldn’t do any of it if I didn’t live a block away. There’s no commute, so my proximity is the big secret sauce.”

Woodward points to the fact that her life has followed the evolution of Silicon Valley. Her father was a market researcher for SRI – then the Stanford Research Institute – and, as a child, she witnessed the meteoric rise of technology in her hometown.

She remembers when the region was still nicknamed the Valley of Heart’s Delight for the apricot and peach orchards that lined the Peninsula. When she took student groups to China (2006–2016) for a course she created called China Energy Systems, she packed dried apricots as gifts for Chinese hosts, a tribute to Silicon Valley’s lesser-known history. 

“I feel like I won a lottery ticket that I was born here, and I’ve had this gravitational attraction to be part of the Stanford community, even coming here as a graduate student – twice.”

Energy transitions

Woodward studied geology as an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She returned to the Farm to pursue a master’s in engineering geology.

“My earliest memory of Jane is sitting around a table in Mitchell with all of us incoming students,” said John Moragne, MS ’82, MBA ’86. One by one, the students shared their intended academic focus.

“And then Jane said, ‘Well, I don’t know what I want to do, but I like fieldwork.’ That’s exactly how I felt, so, there was an immediate kinship,” he said.

Stephan Graham, MS ’74, PhD ’76, the school’s Welton Joseph and Maud L’Anphere Crook Professor of Applied Earth Sciences and former dean, remembers when Woodward and Moragne came knocking on his door in search of an advisor, and they became his second and third graduate advisees, respectively.

“They were both clearly of an applied bent,” Graham recalled. Together the duo were academic magpies, taking classes in civil engineering, hydrology, and business statistics. They contacted researchers in Louisiana for a dataset on submarine landslides in the Gulf of Mexico, and wrote companion dissertations.

Woodward started her career as a petroleum geologist with ARCO, returning once again to Stanford for her MBA shortly thereafter.

In 1986, she co-founded what is now MAP Energy, a private energy investment firm that focused very early in unconventional natural gas reservoirs and shale gas. In 2003, MAP evolved to add incubation of large portfolios of wind, solar, and energy storage project development assets in the United States. Soon after the sale of the renewable assets in 2020, Woodward co-founded WovenEarth Ventures, a U.S. early-stage climate tech venture fund of funds – a pooled investment vehicle to provide diversification for new investors in this emerging sector.

Mentoring superheroes

Stanford first invited Woodward to teach in 1991.

“I thought someone had offered me a Willy Wonka ticket,” she said, and she quickly set about finding ways to make Understand Energy more experiential.

From the beginning, Woodward created pioneering field trips to get students to places like the largest geothermal field in the world – the Geysers, about 72 miles north of San Francisco – or to the billion-barrel San Ardo Oil Field two hours south of campus. The students saw firsthand how these industries work and how to think critically about their impact. For example, for every 100 barrels that come out of the ground, only 6 contain oil and 94 contain water.

“You just can’t get it unless you see it,” Woodward said.

Later, for other classes during spring break, she brought students to Basalt, Colorado, to learn about energy efficiency from Amory Lovins at the think tank Rocky Mountain Institute, now known as RMI, and to China to witness the scale of that nation’s energy infrastructure. Amidst the complex logistics of delivering these immersive learning experiences, Woodward would bring her three young daughters as special guests on the trips.

Diana Gragg, MS ’05, PhD ’12, an alumna of Understand Energy, said the course “literally changed my trajectory and what I wanted to do.”

Gragg is the managing director for the Precourt Institute’s Explore Energy program, the university’s hub for student energy education, and she now leads and co-teaches the course that altered her life alongside Woodward and Kirsten Stasio, an adjunct lecturer and CEO of the Nevada Clean Energy Fund.

“Jane likes to work in the background, and she elevates others. That is her magic,” Gragg said. “She likes to make others more successful at what they’re passionate about.”

Woodward is also fascinated by missing pieces – especially those that impact Stanford students interested in energy and decarbonization.

“When I see a gap, it’s like, oh my, I can’t believe we don’t do that. It’s not as a criticism to any individual, but just the recognition that it’s hard for institutions to do things that are interstitial – that are in-between,” she said about her aim to help students with wayfinding. “The navigation is important for helping people get all the good stuff while they’re at Stanford. You’re only in the candy store for a short period of time.”

Woodward is deeply committed to energy literacy – including efficiency and equity, topics receiving growing interest yet not well practiced or taught relative to their importance in solving systemic energy needs.

If you find a Stanford initiative related to energy that’s knitting together disparate groups on campus, odds are good that if you tug on the string long enough, you’ll find Woodward standing at the other end.

From launching Explore Energy, to organizing and supporting the Schneider and Shultz Energy Fellowships, to kick-starting the first Explore Energy House on campus, to connecting Stanford budding climate tech entrepreneurs to resources through Stanford Climate Ventures, to being the longest-standing member of the Precourt Institute for Energy Advisory Council – there’s Jane Woodward.

Or you might find her standing in her backyard every September, addressing more than 100 graduate students in their first days on campus for the closing dinner of the graduate student energy orientation program Energy@Stanford & SLAC, her favorite night of the year.

“When I look out on that audience, these incredible graduate students who have come from Mumbai or Kansas City,” she said, “it’s like they arrived at Stanford with a superhero cape on. It’s like they are lit up, they’re ready to join hands. They’re like Marvel superheroes. They’re going to make the world a better place.”

Her optimism isn’t blind, but it’s relentlessly hopeful. As someone whose parents died when she was young, Woodward has emerged with tremendous resilience and inner fortitude. Her commitment to hope is reflected in her drive, creativity, and generosity.

“It’s all going to work out. We’re humans. It’s messy,” she said. “I’m just one of many people trying to help us evolve where we desperately need to go, and where Stanford has extraordinary superpowers to leverage.”

The Precourt Institute for Energy is part of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

Arun Majumdar is the Jay Precourt Professor in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and a professor of mechanical engineering, of energy science and engineering, of photon science, and, by courtesy, of materials science and engineering. He is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy.

Our alumni are changing the world. Each year, we recognize alumni for their highly significant contributions to addressing today’s sustainability challenges and celebrate their long-lasting impact on the Stanford community and on the world. Submit your nomination for the 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award today.