The Team

Amy O. Cooke is a founder, President, and Chairman of the Board of Always On Energy Research. She’s also the founder of the public policy consulting firm East x West Strategies, where she has parlayed decades of think tank, policy, strategy, and legislative experience into positioning her clients for policy success within their respective states.

Prior to AOER, Amy was the CEO of the John Locke Foundation in North Carolina and the EVP of the Independence Institute in Colorado, where she also directed energy and environmental policy.

In 2016, President-elect Donald Trump named her to the Transition Team for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Amy is a veteran of Colorado’s oil and gas wars. She’s led successful issue and candidate campaigns. Peers have recognized her with the most prestigious awards, including the Spark Freedom Award, Pollie Awards “the Oscars of Political Advertising,” and Reed Awards, “the most exacting award in political campaigning.”

A First Amendment champion, Amy presented testimony in Congress about the importance of protecting free speech in the energy debate. She has authored and contributed to numerous opinion editorials, issue papers, and issue backgrounders and has been published in the Daily Caller, Townhall, Washington Examiner, The Hill, Denver Post, Pueblo Chieftain, Greeley Tribune, Denver Business Journal, Colorado Politics, Charlotte Observer, Durham Herald Sun, Raleigh News and Observer, Carolina Journal, and Complete Colorado. She’s also an award-winning radio host and columnist.

Amy earned a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a master’s degree in American History from the University of Northern Colorado.

Isaac Orr is a founder and Vice President of Research at Always On Energy Research, where he conducts energy modeling and writes about energy and environmental issues, electricity policy, and natural resource development. His writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the New York Post, The Hill, and many other publications. He and his colleague Mitch Rolling have modeled the cost and reliability impacts of Environmental Protection Agency regulations in the Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator and Southwest Power Pool. They have also evaluated the cost and reliability implications of energy policies in more than twelve states. Isaac grew up on a small family dairy farm in Wisconsin, so he cares deeply about the issues affecting rural America.

Mitch Rolling is a founder, and Director of Research at Always On Energy Research, where he models energy proposals, analyzes the energy industry and electricity policy, and writes about energy and environmental issues. His research has been featured in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Forbes. Mitch and his colleague Isaac Orr co-authored an award-winning report highlighting the impact of Minnesota’s 50 percent renewable energy proposal and have designed several energy models to analyze the impact of energy proposals in twelve states and Environmental Protection Agency regulations in the Midcontinental Independent System Operator (MISO) and Southwest Power Pool (SPP). Mitch graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in history, and he earned an MS in Finance and Economics at West Texas A&M University in 2022.