Welcome to AwarePreneurs, the world's longest running social entrepreneur podcast. If you could take a moment and hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps our guests reach more social entrepreneurs. Thank you. Today I am thrilled to introduce you to Representative Meredith Dixon. And our topic today is Building an Advanced Energy Ecosystem in New Mexico. In a political climate that is more partisan and polarized than ever, the idea of working together for the common good seems impossible. State Representative Meredith Dixon has a different view. Her approach, one which is focused on bringing people together, is getting results for the people of Albuquerque and all of New Mexico.

Representative Dixon is one of the founders of New Mexico Women Lead, the organization that sponsors the Building an Advanced Energy Ecosystem conference this year. It takes place on September 15th and 16th at the Sandia Resort and Casino near Albuquerque. She was also the keynote for the recent Climate and Advanced energy track of TechTalks during Atomic 66 in Albuquerque. And her keynote got the highest positive feedback of any of our 55 plus speakers on the event. So I am thrilled to have Meredith here. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, Paul. I am very excited to be here and had a wonderful time at atomic 66. So thank you for including me in that.

It's an honor to have you there. We got such great feedback that we incorporated tech talks and we'll talk about that some other time. I'm about to do a solo episode on that because I want people to know about it. But we're not here to talk about that. In your bio Emeritus, you start off talking about the polarized landscape. We're seeing that here in New Mexico. We're seeing that throughout the US we're seeing that throughout the world. And just last night I was talking to two.

I was at an event, I was talking to two different entrepreneurs. I know both of them. One of them is very progressive and one of them is very conservative. And both of them think highly of you. And that's not that common. Right. So talk to us a little bit about that piece in your bio about how do you personally think about providing value and building community and navigating polarized times that we're experiencing right now.

Paul, thank you for asking me that. It is probably one of my favorite subjects to talk about. So when I decided to run for office in 2020, one of the reasons that, you know, I ultimately decided to do it is House District 20 is a swing district. And so it's, it's fairly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats and that we've got a large portion of independents. And one of the things that I felt I could bring to the table was an ability to listen and talk to both sides of the aisle and sort of bring people together. I grew up in a household where my mom was liberal, is a liberal Democrat. My father was very conservative. Just so happens that my husband is Republican, probably a little bit more libertarian.

But, you know, I am very used to being able to, you know, just have conversations with someone, regardless of political affiliation and focus on the areas that we can agree on and figure out what some common solutions are. I try not to get bogged down in some of the hot topics and, and I, you know, at least my husband and I have figured out, you know, just when to agree to disagree. So, yeah, that's sort of what started it for me.

Important skill. Agree to disagree sometimes and do that respectfully. Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So there's some context to this episode. We're going to be talking quite a bit about advanced energy and clean tech in New Mexico. I just want to name listeners. There will be links to two other episodes I've done with leaders here in New Mexico for some background. One is episode 354 with Representative Andrea Romero. We did a pretty deep dive into the New Mexico Permanent Fund, so we might mention that today because it's a very substantial resource. But we won't have to go that deep because you can check that out more. And also episode 361 with Rebecca Stair, who's the director of the New Mexico Energy Office.