Sadie Bender is an economist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), where she has worked since 2014. Her work centers on end-use flexibility in the context of rapid load growth, with particular attention to the evolving role of electrification and emerging technologies such as electric vehicles and vehicle-grid integration. She leads efforts that evaluate both customer-level and system-wide impacts of large-scale autonomous demand flexibility, helping to quantify how flexible loads can improve grid performance and planning outcomes. Her work explores how coordinated demand can respond to changing system conditions, mitigate infrastructure constraints, improve affordability and support more efficient utilization of grid assets.