Cindy has been instrumental in a lot of firsts in ADB’s energy sector operations. Her innovative work helped pave the way for significant renewable energy development in the region. Since she assumed office as Director of Emerging Areas, she has been focusing on frontier energy technologies for clean power generation, storage and grids, and on new ways of working to deliver maximum development impact to clients. She is a champion of cross-sector collaboration that aims to deploy integrated solutions in the energy-transport-water-urban-agriculture-digital and climate nexus.  

In her early years at ADB, Cindy led the design of Uzbekistan’s International Solar Energy Institute and its solar road map that led to gigawatt-scale deployment in less than 10 years. Cindy also catalyzed the first solar project in Afghanistan, conceptualized the first energy sector financial intermediation project in Armenia, and introduced the renewable energy auction mechanism in Kazakhstan. She also pioneered the floating solar PV (FPV) in ADB, and her pilot projects in Azerbaijan and in the Kyrgyz Republic are scaling up and are poised to change the landscape in Central Asia. In the Pacific, she is leading ADB’s first energy sector projects in Kiribati and Tuvalu. As part of the FPV road map she advanced for 11 Pacific Island countries, she developed the first near-shore marine FPV plus productive uses of energy projects in Kiribati and Tuvalu, catalyzing integrated solutions for island communities. These constituted one package under ADB’s first regional procurement floated in 2024. She also conceptualized ADB’s first design-build-operate contracting in 2014 and cross-sector joint procurement in 2021.  

Cindy holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (cum laude), a Master of Engineering major in renewable sources of energy, and a PhD in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering.