Sonia Kastner, Pano AI

In recognition of Women’s History Month, PUF sat down with thirteen women leaders across the energy sector to capture their perspectives at a pivotal moment for our industry.

Demand is rising. Infrastructure investment is accelerating. Utilities, regulators, and innovators are navigating increasing expectations around affordability, reliability, and resilience. In this environment, leadership is not theoretical. It is operational. Decisions made today will shape markets, systems, and communities for decades.

The women featured here represent the breadth of the modern grid. Their roles span utilities, regulatory commissions, federal public power, trade associations, research institutions, consumer advocacy offices, and technology companies. The perspectives are varied, but several themes recur: translating complexity into clarity, balancing competing priorities, preparing the workforce of the future, and keeping customers at the center of the conversation.

These conversations are not a single narrative. They are a collection of viewpoints reflecting the realities of leadership in motion. Together, they offer insight into how this essential industry is being guided forward at a time of significant change.

PUF’s Rachel Bryant: Few people set out to build careers in wildfire technology or grid resilience. How did your path lead you to this work?

Sonia Kastner: My path here was intentional, but it was not a straight line. I came out of business school knowing I wanted to work in a mission-driven industry. Before that, much of my education and early career focused on public service, politics, and government.

I studied physics as an undergraduate, which gave me a strong technical foundation. When I arrived at Stanford for business school, I explored several sectors, including healthcare, education, and energy. Energy ultimately felt like the right intersection of mission, scale, and technical complexity.

My first job after business school was in solar energy. This was between 2007 and 2009, when climate change was becoming a central focus in academic and policy circles. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports were coming out, and while the projections were deeply concerning, there was also optimism that energy could be part of the solution.

I explored a range of technologies, including wind, geothermal, batteries, and transportation, but solar stood out as having enormous potential to transform electricity generation. I made a deliberate decision to build my career in that space.

PUF: How did your early work in energy and technology ultimately lead to the founding of Pano AI?

Sonia Kastner: The solar industry went through a dramatic evolution. In the early days, there were well over a hundred venture-backed solar startups, each pursuing different technologies.

I worked for a company using gallium arsenide to produce thin-film portable solar panels. Over time, the market consolidated, and while solar continued to scale globally, much of the innovation moved overseas, particularly to Germany and China.

As Silicon Valley’s role in solar innovation diminished, I shifted into the Internet of Things (IoT) space. Over several years, I worked on energy products, smart home technologies, and wearables. I spent time at Nest, where I was excited about the energy implications of the Nest thermostat, which was an early example of demand response and virtual power plant thinking.

I also worked on the Nest Cam, one of the first AI-enabled cameras capable of distinguishing between people, pets, and intruders. That experience, in 2014, gave me early exposure to computer vision and real-time analytics.

My co-founder and I had known each other for years, and by 2019 and 2020, we both felt that IoT and AI had matured in consumer and commercial settings but were just beginning to be adopted in critical infrastructure. At the same time, wildfires were becoming more severe and more frequent.

During Australia’s Black Summer fires, we were doing early research and speaking with experts across the wildfire ecosystem. What we heard consistently was the same message. There was a need for new tools that could enable earlier detection and better situational awareness.

Firefighters, emergency managers, and utilities were all asking for better data. That convergence of technology readiness and urgent need is what led us to create Pano.

PUF: How has it been working with utilities as customers and partners?

Sonia Kastner: Our experience working with utilities has been very positive, particularly when it comes to resilience. Utilities have been thoughtful, engaged partners as we introduce new technology into their operations.

Our fire detection system is used not only by utilities, but also by ski resorts, forestry companies, and state and federal agencies. Utilities are sophisticated in how they evaluate and deploy new tools. They have innovation teams, structured pilot programs, and clear criteria for scaling solutions that demonstrate value.

Situational awareness has been especially compelling because it can be deployed quickly and at lower cost than large infrastructure projects like undergrounding or major system hardening. In many cases, we can deploy coverage across an entire utility service territory in a single year, between fire seasons, without disrupting service or requiring major construction. It is not a replacement for long-term investments, but it is a powerful complement.

From the beginning, we knew we needed to deeply understand how utilities operate. Within months of founding the company, we brought on utility advisors to help us learn how utilities think about procurement, operations, and regulation.

We also chose an industry-focused incubator affiliated with EPRI rather than a traditional Silicon Valley accelerator. That decision gave us direct access to utility partners and helped us secure our earliest pilots.

PUF: How have you kept your team aligned and motivated through Pano’s growth?

Sonia Kastner: Growth brings excitement, but it also requires intention. Last year, we raised our Series B and surpassed one hundred fifty employees, which was an important milestone.

As we grew, we made a point of checking in with our team, especially those who had been with the company since the early days. We conducted surveys and one-on-one conversations to better understand how people were feeling and what continued to motivate them.

What we heard consistently was that people come to Pano because of the mission. Many of our employees live in wildfire-prone regions, including California, Colorado, the Pacific Northwest, Texas, the Midwest, and Australia, and some have experienced wildfire impacts directly.

These are highly skilled professionals who could work in many industries, but they chose to be here to support first responders and communities.

In response, we formalized our company values and made them central to how we operate. Those values include impact, service, trust, excellence with speed, and innovation. That clarity helped people reconnect with why their work matters.

We work intentionally to connect employees to the real-world impact of their work. Customer-facing teams hear directly from utilities and emergency managers, while engineers and operations staff hear those stories through internal sessions.

It is important that everyone understands how their work translates into outcomes that protect lives and communities.

PUF: What advice would you offer to leaders building technology in the energy and resilience space?

Sonia Kastner: One of the most important lessons is that the energy sector operates very differently from traditional technology markets. Utilities and emergency agencies are mission-driven public servants operating under regulatory oversight, with a strong focus on reliability, safety, and trust.

If you approach this space with a “move fast and break things” mindset, you will fail. Our philosophy is to move fast and not break things. Values matter. A culture driven purely by profit will not resonate with customers responsible for public safety and critical infrastructure.

Both my co-founder and I come from backgrounds in manufacturing and infrastructure, where reliability and quality are non-negotiable. That perspective has shaped Pano’s culture and been central to our success.

Energy and resilience work can be deeply meaningful when the goal is to serve the people who keep the lights on and protect communities.

PUF: Looking ahead, what do you hope Pano will help accomplish?

Sonia Kastner: Our goal is to help shift wildfire response from reactive to proactive. Earlier detection enables faster response, smaller fires, and better outcomes for communities and ecosystems.

We also want to continue building trust with the utilities, agencies, and first responders who rely on our technology by listening closely to their needs, improving our tools, and ensuring our systems perform when they are needed most.

Wildfires are becoming a permanent part of the landscape in many regions. While we cannot eliminate risk, we can give people better tools to manage it. That is what motivates our work. 

Women’s History Month articles at fortnightly.com

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• Hannah Bascom, Uplight Chief Growth and Commercial Officer
• Michele Beck, Utah Office of Consumer Services Director
• Vittoria Bellissimo, CanREA President and CEO
• Judy Chang, FERC Commissioner
• Neva Espinoza, EPRI Senior Vice President, Energy Supply, and Chief Generation Officer
• Sonia Kastner, Pano AI Co-Founder and CEO
• Maria Korsnick, Nuclear Energy Institute CEO
• Tracey LeBeau, WAPA Administrator and CEO
• Michele O'Connell, Orange and Rockland Utilities CEO
• Ann Rendahl, NARUC President
• Melissa Washington, ComEd Senior Vice President
• Alice Yake, Breakthrough Energy Vice President, GRIDS