March 20, 2026
Bear Essentials March 20th: The California Dream, Unevenly Distributed
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Catherine Reheis-Boyd has finished a 35-year career with the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA). She served as the Association’s President and CEO overseeing WSPA’s operations and advocacy across five Western states — California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, and Oregon.
With more than 40 years of experience in the oil and natural gas industry, Catherine began her career with an environmental consulting firm before joining Getty Oil and Texaco, where she focused on environmental compliance at the Kern River Field in Bakersfield, California. She joined WSPA in 1990 and opened the first oil production office in Bakersfield. Later she moved to Sacramento, CA to open the first WSPA office in the Capital City.
As President and CEO, Catherine led WSPA through a period of significant change and challenge. She guided the Association’s work on transportation fuels policy, air, waste, and water quality, climate change, crude oil and natural gas production. Under her leadership, WSPA strengthened its role as a trusted voice for the industry, developing positive relationships with regulatory agencies and numerous traditional and non-traditional stakeholders while advancing efforts in emissions reduction, carbon capture, alternative and renewable energy, and energy innovation.
In addition to her work at WSPA, Catherine was appointed in 2004 to the California Marine Life Protection Act Blue Ribbon Task Force, where she served an eight-year term focused on safeguarding the state’s ocean resources. She also served on the National Marine Protected Areas Center’s Federal Advisory Committee, advising NOAA and the U.S. Department of the Interior on marine conservation strategies.
Catherine has been widely recognized for her leadership and advocacy. In 2016, she was named Distinguished Woman and Petroleum Advocate of the Year by the California Latino Leadership Institute. In 2018, she helped launch the Women of WSPA Initiative (WOWI), a network dedicated to ensuring that women in the oil and gas industry have equal opportunities, representation, and respect and was featured on the front cover of Comstock Magazine in March of 2020 for the 100-year suffrage movement anniversary to salute women in leadership. In 2025, she received the Emma Summers Award from the California Independent Oil Producers Association (CIPA) and was inducted into the Capitol Weekly Top 100 Hall of Fame of powerful movers and shakers in CA politics. The Top 100 Hall of Fame spotlights those who have a track record of influence so impressive that they are acknowledged in a way that stands the test of time. She continues to serve on the Board of the Pyles Boys Camp, daring boys to be men since 1949 building life skills and instilling values of hard work, education and positive choices.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in Natural Resource Management from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and pursued postgraduate studies in environmental engineering at the University of Southern California.
Throughout her career, Catherine has been proud to represent an industry that provides affordable, reliable, and ever-cleaner energy to millions of people. She is deeply grateful for the colleagues, mentors, and partners who shaped her journey, and she remains optimistic about the innovation of the energy industry as she transitions into her next chapter. Catherine launched her own consulting company Sadhana Solutions, LLC where she will continue to engage in energy and environmental policy, in an intentional, impactful, and disciplined way starting with tri-chairing the New CA Coalition (NCC) Energy Task Force, one of the four pillars of NCC’s portfolio.
She was also recently appointed by the Governor of Nevada as Vice-Chair of the Fuel Resiliency Committee under Homeland Security as the shared interconnection of the fuel delivering system that ties CA, NV and Arizona together continues to be optimized.
Catherine brings immense experience and optimism into her next chapter of impactful change for a brighter future.
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We want results, and we are mobilizing to achieve them. The New California Coalition is organizing everyday voters, business leaders, and community organizations from across the state into a movement to demand change and action.
We want a massive amount of housing built to make homes accessible to buyers, renters, and the unhoused alike, not more excuses, red tape, and NIMBYism.
We want safe streets and communities instead of finger pointing, victim blaming, or hiding inaction behind empty and dangerous slogans.
We want clean and healthy public spaces that we can pass down to the next generation rather than complaining about or denying the damage being done. We want to build financial security through good paying jobs rather than blocking the industries that can transform our society and balloon the middle class.
We are Californians from all different backgrounds – from business to workers, from disenchanted political organizers to unaffiliated and disaffected voters. We are ready to solve the most pressing challenges facing our state, but our first step is to create a political voice for this army of Common Sense Californians.
Since 1980, housing construction has stalled in California but our population has exploded. Home buying is out of reach and rents are going up every year. We must ramp up home building to meet the needs of residents and bring down the cost of living.
California accounts for 28% of the country’s entire homeless population and more than 50% of the unsheltered homeless individuals. The homeless population in the Bay Area has grown four times faster than the overall regional population since 2010.
The homicide rate rate for some of California’s largest cities – Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, and San Francisco – increased by about 17% in 2021; and none of these even approach the overall per capita crime rates of places like Stockton, San Bernardino, Compton, and Richmond. Californians across the state report feeling unsafe as one of their biggest concerns and reasons why the Golden State is becoming increasingly unlivable.
Every year we see fires spread larger and watering restrictions become more severe, but the response to address climate change and resource consumption remains single minded and half hearted: consume less gas and use less water. California cannot survive without better water management and climate mitigation. From desalination to clean energy sources like solar, wind, green hydrogen, biomass, or geothermal – there are common sense solutions that already exist if our leaders invested in building rather than political jockeying and finger pointing.
From the valleys to the coasts, we're all trying to do our best and build stable lives for our families. What issues do you think must be fixed in your communities? Share your story.
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