Diversity: Kevin Walker

PUF examines our industry's drive to diversify its workforce and spend. This section focuses on the progress at Duquesne Light described by its COO Kevin Walker.
 

PUF: Why is diversity in the utility workplace and in utility spend so important to Duquesne Light?

Kevin Walker: It's important and should be to every company. Duquesne Light is representative, but it's a competitive advantage because of bringing all the critical talents, skills, experience, and instincts of diverse talent.

Often, it's limited to a small group. There's a lot of assimilation going on. So, even if you have the diversity, it gets crunched, and everybody has to think the same way. When you have inclusion, equity, and belonging, then you're firing on all cylinders.

From an investment standpoint, within the community, diverse business owners, and diverse suppliers, it's a game changer. It creates a competitive environment that allows you to have local impact. We invest in a lot of local businesses that happen to be diverse. We have supplier diversity targets. It ups your game in a way you can't if you're not focused on those issues.

PUF: What have you seen in how diversity can affect communities in this industry?

Kevin Walker: I've been at six utilities, and I've learned so much from each of them. I started at Con Edison in New York.

At Duquesne Light, it's a diverse population. We're the second most diverse population compared to Philadelphia. A lot of people don't know that in Pennsylvania. It's important in representing the community you serve, being able to understand their unique sensitivities and experiences and follow that into how you show up in a meaningful way. 

All six of those utilities and every utility across the country has a unique stake in the community's growth and success and viability. It's an important cog locally. Taking on that responsibility, you have to understand the whole of your community and lean in where they need support.

PUF: You're the COO. What do you see as your role in helping affect the culture and thinking about teams, hiring, spend, and integrating diversity into that thinking and culture?

Kevin Walker: It starts with showing up as my authentic self. I spent part of my career assimilating. I use that term meaning I was trying to show everybody I was just like them. You think about, I have a pocket protector. I've got a blue shirt with a tie. I'm just like you. There's nothing to fear and nothing to see here. I'm exactly the same. Then I got to a place in my career where it was like, no, my difference is what brings the value to the table. 

Someone told me, if everybody's thinking the same, everybody's agreeing that somebody is redundant. You don't need somebody because everybody's thinking about the same thing. When I started the stepping into that, I learned, it's okay to have a different opinion, a different perspective.

Take shut off notices. When I grew up as a kid in a poor neighborhood, I remember my parents saying, this month we're going to have heat. The next month we're going to have lights. The next month we're going to have heat, and so on.

That's because they were making decisions on how to take the dollar and stretch it across all of those obligations. I have that perspective. I have sensitivities that some people don't.

When I started taking that courageous step to allow that to come out, it was rewarded. People now allow different thinking. We have to embrace and encourage it.

As my career went on and I started getting encouraged and rewarded for that, then I was able to step up more. Ultimately as a senior leader now, I've got to turn around and encourage others to do the same.

PUF: When you were younger your difference stood out. You were usually the only West Point grad in the room. Have you seen change? You've said you've been at a few companies.

Kevin Walker: I loved my time in New York and it has a special place in my heart. The utility industry has changed over time and region. Look at the progressive leaning forward nature of California, where I came from.

A lot of this was embedded in law and regulations, that you had to have a supplier diversity program that touched multiple segments of the society. We were pushing in the forty to almost fifty percent range in diverse supplier spend.

Here at Duquesne Light, we're starting from a different point, but we're just as aggressive. We think someday we can get there. We're going to incrementalize our way there, as we get better proficiency and better relationships with vendors that could supply our needs.

What's different is that as my career has gone on, people are focused on it now, significantly. People are at different stages, but companies are focused on moving in that direction.

PUF: You've heard, and maybe less now, it's too hard. We can't find qualified people of color. We can't find qualified contractors. Talk to that.

Kevin Walker: That's one of the first lines of the playbook. We can't find them. Our demographics in our region don't support it, or women are not interested in coming into our industry, or it's too physical for this type of person.

Just insert whatever kind of oppressed group you want to put in there. Being a part of one of those groups, it's kind of laughable. The HDCs across this country have a valedictorian, a salutatorian, and anybody else.

What it comes down to is even if the desire's there, you've got to create a value proposition. The value proposition is for those folks coming to our industry, enjoying our industry, and staying in our industry. The onus is on the company.

If you don't create that value proposition, then there's a self-fulfilling prophecy to say we can't find them. It's not that we can't find them. We can't attract them because we don't have a value proposition that's worthy of them. 

The other piece I'll add to that is, often we have to challenge our requirements for our jobs. I worked in one of my six utilities that had a requirement you had to lift a hundred pounds, over your head, ten times.

That was a requirement from some point in our history when there was a piece of equipment and you were going to be lifting it. From a safety standpoint, that is not the way that we need to be operating. We don't do that.

Male, female, we don't do that anymore. But it still was embedded in our job requirements. We have to challenge those things and ask, do you need to do that?

The new requirement is, can you lift twenty-five pounds to your waist? Because that's as far as you're going to have to lift it before you put it on a dolly and roll it over to wherever you want to use this piece of equipment.

PUF: If a woman, or a person of color, male or female, wants to know about our industry and asks, is this a good industry for me? Would you encourage them to try to get into the utilities industry? What do you say?

Kevin Walker: Yes, absolutely. That's just based on my history. It's just gotten better, and I see it even getting better. There's a lot of opportunity. There is an increasing recognition of the value proposition of different ethnicities and experiences and all of that.

The regulators are going there, the policymakers are going there, and our customers are demanding this. As we get more responsive to all of those stakeholders, we have to move in that direction.

I'm a long time member of AABE �" American Association of Blacks in Energy. I'm on the board. That's an organization that has helped me put in perspective how important and how successful African-Americans can be in the industry.

I encourage anyone to come with your full self and help us move in the right direction. You'll find these organizations and individuals that are allies. There are people outside of your diverse group, as well as people in your group that can help you be successful along the way.

PUF: AABE is not just for African-Americans. Paula Glover and now Ralph Cleveland, have tried to encourage it being a major event for all in our industry. 

Kevin Walker: We have just started three BERGs. We call them Business Employee Resource Groups. We have one for veterans, A-VETS, which I'm happy to be a part of. I'm a part of the sponsorship team there.

We have a women's BERG, Empower Her. We also have an African-Americans BERG, which is the Bridge BERG. They kind of self-named. It's cool.

As time has gone on, they have become a business resource. They take all of their being and who they are when they are their full selves, and they can integrate it into the senior leadership team.

We asked them to help partner on certain things we're trying to accomplish, with these sticky issues within the company. We asked them to lead on certain areas where they're in a good position to help lead and bring a different level of credibility to issues we're trying to resolve.

They have a bigger, broader role. In context, it's helping the members, but it's also helping the company. We split those three up and they're firing on all cylinders and doing a great job.

PUF: When folks ask, what does it take to have a great career? What do you tell them?

Kevin Walker: I often say there are many paths to success. I think about the folks that I emulated or tried to learn something from, and all of the CEOs I've worked for. They all had different characteristics, traits, and paths.

Sometimes on the surface, to try to create a recipe is difficult because some of them have been engineers. Some of them came from the legal part of the business. Some came from the regulatory. Some had a more varied career. They were more of a generalist. But the thing they had in common is they cared about people. The successful ones cared about people, the customer, the industry.

They made sacrifices, unfortunately, for all of those things. They led with a humility, dignity, and an openness that brought everybody to the table in a valued way. If you had those elements, which steps you take will be the right ones because you are bringing along with you that way of looking at things, empowering and leveraging teams, and seeing people be their best.

Diversity in Utilities Workforce and Spend articles:

• Hugh Price, former National Urban League president, and Ran Yan, executive director of the Lewis Latimer House Museum
• Exelon Utilities CEO Calvin Butler
• Duquesne Light COO Kevin Walker
• ITC Holdings CEO Linda Apsey
• Duke Energy SVP Melody Birmingham
• Byron Witherspoon of Ameren
• Andy Jarvis and Ron Evans of Burns & McDonnell