Salt Lake City, Utah, September 16, 2026
Cara Baldwin, Torus's Chief Legal Officer and Head of Product Operations, was recognized this afternoon as one of 23 honorees in the 2026 Women Tech Awards. Hosted by the Women Tech Council and presented by Entrata, the awards recognize women leading companies and spurring innovation across Utah's tech sector.
Ask Cara what makes her good at the job, and she doesn’t reach for the science degree or the 20 years of legal practice. She'll tell you she strives to be the most approachable person in the room, and that being approachable gets you 80% of the way to the right answer. Early on, she had planned on patent law. She became a generalist instead, because the fastest way to be useful was, in her words, “to admit I had no idea and then go figure out.”
That approach has built things. She has been the first in-house legal hire at two emerging tech companies, and at both she built the function from nothing. At Pluralsight, she ran Fortune 500 deal flow ahead of the IPO. At Torus, she has taken on an operations role, while still serving as Chief Legal Officer, which led to four months on the production floor, streamlining production lines and internal procurement. Most importantly, her work on permitting brought install timelines for Torus Reserve down from more than five months to three and a half.
Her leadership style is to hire smart people and get out of their way, a line she credits to her mentor Matt Forkner. The rest of it shows up in the programs she builds. The mentorship program she started at Pluralsight moved hundreds of people through it, and alumni still ask her for the structure documentation when they land at new companies. She volunteered with SheTech before law school and sponsored her son's Technology Student Association chapter at his high school in Farmington.
Deploying energy infrastructure is a complex undertaking. It requires optimizing production lines, working through contract reviews, and navigating permitting processes. At every step, Cara is the leader in the room people are excited to engage with.